LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. ! 
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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, j 



A LITERARY PILGRIMAGE 



BY DR. WOLFE 
Uniform with this volume 

LITERARY SHRINES 

THE HAUNTS OF SOME FAMOUS AMERICAN 
AUTHORS 

Treating descriptively and reminiscently of the 
scenes amid which Hawthorne, Longfellow, 
Whittier, Emerson, and many other American 
authors lived and wrote 

223 pages. Illustrated with four 
photogravures. $1.25 

A LITERARY PILGRIMAGE AND LITERARY SHRINES 

Two volumes in a box, $2.50 



*■*> 



A LITERARY 
PILGRIMAGE 

AMONG THE HAUNTS 
OF FAMOUS BRITISH 
AUTHORS 



BY THEODORE F. WOLFE 
M.D. Ph.D. 

\ AUTHOR OF LITERARY SHRINES ETC. 









****)*% 



J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 
PHILADELPHIA. MDCCCXCV 







^ 



j^^te-^ 







Copyright, 1895, 

BY 

Theodore F. Wolfe. 



Printed by J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia, U.S.A. 



PREFACE 

'T^HE favor with which a few articles in the 
periodical press, similar to those herewith 
presented, have been received induces the hope 
that the present volume may prove acceptable. 
If some popular literary shrines which are 
inevitably included in the writer's personal 
itinerary are herein accorded but scant notice, 
it is for the reason that they have been already 
so oft described that portrayal of them is 
therefore purposely omitted from this account 
of a literary pilgrimage : even Stratford-on- 
Avon here for once escapes description. How- 
ever, the initial paragraphs of these chapters 
lightly outline a series of literary rambles which 
the writer has found measurably complete and 
consecutive. The pilgrim is understood to make 
his start from London. 

If these notes of his sojourns in the scenes 
hallowed by the presence of British authors or 
embalmed in their books shall prove pleasantly 
reminiscent to some who have fared to the same 



Preface 

shrines, or helpfully suggestive to others who 
contemplate such pilgrimage, then 

" not in vain 
He wore his sandal shoon and scallop-shell." 

The writer is indebted to the publishers of the 
Home Journal for permission to reproduce one 
or two articles which have appeared in that 
periodical. 

T. F. W. 



CONTENTS 



Literary Hampstead and Highgate. 
Haunt of Dickens— Steele-Pope— Keats-Baillie-yohnson 
— Hunt- Akensi de-Shelley -Hogarth— Addison-Rich- 
ardson— Gay-Besant-Du Maurier-Coleridge t etc. 
—Grave of George Eliot 13 

By Southwark and Thames-Side to Chel- 
sea. 
Chaucer - Shakespeare - Dickens -Walpole-Pepys- Eliot- 
Rossetti - Carlyle - Hunt- Gay-Smollett - Kingsley— 
Herbert — Dor set- Addison - Shaftesbury-Locke—Bo- 
lingbroke-Pope-Richardson y etc. 24 

The Scene of Gray's Elegy. 
The Country Church- Yard- Tomb of Gray— Stoke- Pogis 
Church-Reverie and Reminiscence-Scenes of Mil- 
ton-Waller-Porter-Coke-Denham 39 

DlCKENSLAND *. Gad's HlLL AND ABOUT. 

Chaucer 1 s Pilgrims -Falstaff -Dickens* s Abode —Study — 
Grounds-Walks-Neighbors-Guests-Scenes of Tales 
-Cobham — Rochester - Pip's Church- Yard - Satis 
House, etc. 49 

7 



Contents 

PAGE 

Some Haunts of Byron. 

Birthplace-London Homes-Murray' s Book-Store-Kensal 
Green- Harrow-Byron 1 s Tomb-H'ts Diadem Hill- 
Abode of his Star of Annesley-P or traits-Mementos 6a 

The Home of Childe Harold. 
Newstead- Byron' s Apartments— Relics and Reminders- 
Ghosts -Ruins -The Toung Oak -Dog's Tomb — 
Devil's Wood— Irving — Livingstone — Stanley — 
Joaquin Miller 80 

Warwickshire : the Loamshire of George 
Eliot. 

Miss Mulock- Butler -Somervile- Dyer-Rugby -Homes 
of George Eliot-Scenes of Tales- Cheverel-Shepper- 
ton-Milly' s Grave - Paddiford-Milby- Coventry , 
etc. -Characters-Incidents 91 

Yorkshire Shrines : Dotheboys Hall and 

ROKEBY. 

Village of Boives-Dickens-Squeers' s School-Tke Master 

and his Family-Haunt of Scott 106 

Sterne's Sweet Retirement. 
Sutton - Crazy Castle - Torick's Church - Parsonage - 
Where Tristram Shandy and the Sentimental 
Journey were ivritten-Reminiscences-Netuburgk 
Hall- Where Sterne died-Sepulchre Ill 

Haworth and the Brontes. 
The Village-Black Bull Inn-Church-Vicar age-Mem- 
ory -haunted Rooms - Bronte Tomb- Moors-Bronte 
8 



Contents 

PAGH 

Cascade- Wuthering Heights - Humble Friends - 
Relic and Recollection 1 21 

Early Haunts or Robert Collyer : Eugene 

Aram. 

Childhood Home-Ilkley Scenes, Friends, Smithy , Chapel- 

Bolton -Associations -Wordsworth -Rogers— Eliot - 

Turner - Aram's Homes — Schools — Place of the 

Murder-Gibbet-Probable Innocence 136 

Home or Sydney Smith. 
Heslington—Foston, Twelve Miles from a Lemon— 
Church-Rector'' s Head-Study- Room-of-all-ivori— 
Grounds - Guests - Universal Scratcher — Immortal 
Chariot— Reminiscences 1 48 

Nithsdale Rambles. 
Scott— Hogg— Wordsivorth-Carlyle' s Birthplace-Homes— 
Grave- Burns' s Haunts — Tomb— J eanie Deans- 
Old Mortality, etc.-Annie Laurie's Birthplace- 
Habitation— Poet-Lover-Descendants 161 

A Niece of Robert Burns. 
Her Burnsland Cottage— Reminiscences of Burns— Relics- 
Portraits — Letters — Recitations — Account of his 
Death-Memories of his Home— Of Bonnie yean- 
Other Heroines t 181 

Highland Mary : her Homes and Grave. 

Birthplace — Personal Appearance— Relations to Burns- 
Abodes : Mauchline, Coilsfield, etc. — Scenes of 
Courtship and Parting-Mementos— Tomb by the 

Clyde 194 

9 



Contents 

PAGE 

Bronte Scenes in Brussels. 
School— Class- Rooms - Dormitory - Garden - Scenes and 
Events of Villette and The Professor-M. Paul- 
Madame Beck-Memories of the Brontes-Confes- 
sional-Grave of Jessy Yorke . 207 

Leman's Shrines. 
Beloved of Litterateurs- Gibbon-D 1 Aubign'e— Rousseau- 
Byron— Shelley —Dickens^ etc.— Scenes of Childe 
Harold- Nouvelle HeloYse- Prisoner of Chillon- 
Land of Byron 226 

Chateaux or Ferney and Coppet. 

Voltaire's Home, Church, Study, Garden, Relics-Liter- 
ary Court of de Stael— Mementos-Famous Rooms, 
Guests - Schlegel— Shelley-Constant-Byron-Davy , 
etc.-De Stairs Tomb 238 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



PAGE 

Castle of Chillon Frontispiece. 

Stoke-Pogis Church and Church- Yard 45 

Newstead Abbey 81 

Home of Annie Laurie 177 



LITERARY HAMPSTEAD AND 
HIGHGATE 

Haunt of Dickens-Bteele-Pope-Keats—Baillie— Johnson-Hunt 
—Akenside-Shelley— Hogarth— Addison— Richardson— Gay— 
Besant-Du Mauri er - Coleridge , etc.-Grave of George 
Eliot. 

'T'HE explorations which first brought re- 
"** nown to the immortal Pickwick were 
made among the uplands which border the val- 
ley of the Thames at the north of London : the 
illustrious creator of Pickwick loved to wander 
in the same region through the picturesque 
landscapes he made the scenes of many incidents 
of his fiction, and the literary prowler of to-day 
can hardly find a ramble more to his mind than 
that from the former home of Dickens or George 
Eliot by Regent's Park to Hampstead, and thence 
through the famous heath to Highgate. The 
way traverses storied ground and teems with his- 
toric associations, but these are, for us, lessened 
and subordinated by the appeal of memories of 
the famed literati who have loved and haunted 
this delightful region, and have imparted to it 
the tenderest charm. The acclivity of Hamp- 
stead has measurably resisted the encroachment 
of London, and has deflected the railroads with 
their disturbing tendencies, so that this old town 
probably retains more of its ancient character 
'3 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

than any other of the near suburbs, and some 
of its quaint streets would scarcely be more 
quiet if they lay a hundred miles away from the 
metropolis. Off the highway by which we 
ascend the hill, we find many evidences of an- 
tiquity, old streets lined by rows of plain and 
sedate dwellings wearing an air of dignified 
sobriety which is not of this century, and 
which is in grateful contrast with the pert arti- 
ficiality of the modern fabrics of the vicinage. 
Many old houses are draped with ivy or 
shrouded by trees of abundant foliage; some 
are shut in by depressing brick walls, over which 
float the perfumes of unseen flowers. A few 
of the older streets lie in perpetual crepuscule, 
being vaulted by gigantic elms and limes as 
opaque as arches of masonry. 

Along the slope of Haverstock hill, where 
our ascent begins, we find the sometime homes 
of Percival, Stanfield, Rowland Hill, and the 
historian Palgrave. Near by is the cottage where 
dwelt Mrs. Barbauld, and the Roslyn House, 
where Sheridan, Pitt, Burke, and Fox were 
guests of Loughborough. Here, too, formerly 
stood the mansion where Steele entertained the 
poet of the " Dunciad," with Garth and other 
famed wits. On the hill-side a leafy lane leads 
out of High Street to the picturesque church 
of the parish, whose tower is a conspicuous 
14 



Baillie — Johnson — Kit-Kat Club 

landmark. Within this fane we find, against 
the wall on the right of the chancel, the beauti- 
ful marble bust recently erected by American 
admirers " To the Ever-living Memory" of the 
author of " Lamia" and '* Hyperion." Here, 
too, is the plain memorial tablet of the poetess 
Joanna Baillie, who lived in an unpretentious 
mansion lately standing in the neighborhood, 
where she was visited by Wordsworth, Rogers, 
and others of potential genius. In the thickly 
tenanted church-yard she sleeps with her sister 
near the graves of Incledon, Erskine, and the 
historian Mackintosh. Below the church, on 
the westering slope, lies embowered Frognall, 
once the home of Gay, where Dr. Johnson 
lived and wrote " The Vanity of Human Wishes" 
in the house where the gifted Nichol now re- 
sides with the author of " Ships that Pass in the 
Night" for a neighbor and with the home of 
Besant in view from his study. Near the sum- 
mit of Hampstead stands a sober old edifice 
which was of yore the Upper Flask tavern, 
where the famous Kit-Kat Club held its summer 
seances, when such luminous spirits as Walpole, 
Prior, Dorset, Pope, Congreve, Swift, Steele, 
and Addison assembled here in the low-panelled 
rooms which we may still see, or beneath the 
old trees of the garden, and interchanged sallies 
of wit and fancy over their cakes and ale. To 
*5 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

this inn Lovelace brought the " Clarissa Har- 
lowe" of Richardson's famed romance, and here 
Steevens, the scholiast of Shakespeare, lived and 
died. Flask Walk, which leads out of the high 
street among old houses and greeneries, brings 
us to the shadowy Well Walk, with its over- 
arching trees and with many living memories 
masoned into its dead walls. Here we see the 
little remnant of the once famous well which 
for a time made Hampstead a resort for the 
fashionable and the suffering. Among the 
fancied invalids who once dwelt in Well Walk 
was the spouse of Dr. Johnson. Akenside, 
Arbuthnot, and Mrs. Barbauld (editor of " Rich- 
ardson's Correspondence") have sometime lived 
in this same little street; here the mother of 
Tennyson died, and here the sweet boy-poet 
Keats lodged and wrote " Endymion." At a 
house still to be seen in the vicinage he was for 
two years the guest of his friend Brown ; here 
he wrote "Hyperion," "St. Agnes," and the 
" Ode to a Nightingale," and here he wasted in 
mortal illness, being at last removed to Rome 
only to die. Under the limes of Well Walk is 
a spot especially hallowed by the memory of 
Keats : it was the object and limit of his walks 
in his later months, and here was placed a seat 
(which until lately was preserved and bore his 
name), where he sat for hours at a time beneath 
16 



Keats — The Heath 

the whispering boughs, gazing, often through 
tears, upon the enchanting vista of wave-like 
woods and fields, the valley with its gleaming 
lakelets, and the farther slopes crowned by the 
spires of Highgate, which rise out of banks of 
foliage. The view is no less beautiful than when 
Keats' s vision lingered lovingly upon it, although 
we must go into the open fields to behold it now. 
If we bestir ourselves to reach the summit of 
the heath before the accustomed pall shall have 
settled down upon the great city, the exertion 
will be abundantly rewarded by the prospect 
that greets us as we overlook the abodes of eight 
millions of souls. Such a view is possible no- 
where else on earth ; outspread before us lies the 
vast metropolis with its seven thousand miles of 
streets, while without and beyond this aggrega- 
tion of houses we behold an expanse of land- 
scape diversified with vale and hill, copse and 
field, village and park, extending for leagues in 
every direction and embracing portions of seven 
of England's populous shires. We see the great 
dome of St. Paul's and the tall towers of West- 
minster rising out of the mass of myriad roofs ; 
the Crystal Palace glinting amid its green 
terraces ; across the city we behold the verdured 
slopes of Surrey and, farther away, the higher 
hills of Sussex ; our eyes follow the course of 

the Thames from imperial Windsor, whose 
b 17 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

battlements are misty in the distance of the 
western horizon, to its mouth at Gravesend; 
yonder at the right is Harrow, set on its classic 
hill-top, with its ancient church by which the 
boy Byron idled and dreamed ; northward we 
see pretty Barnet, where " Oliver Twist" 
met the "Dodger;" nearer is romantic High- 
gate, and all around us lie the green slopes and 
leafy recesses of the heath. Through these 
strode the murderer Sykes of Dickens's tale, and 
from the higher parts of this common we may 
trace the way of his aimless flight from the pur- 
suing eyes of Nancy, — through Islington and 
Highgate to Hendon and Hatfield, and thence 
to the place of his miserable death at Rotherhithe. 
There are hours of delightful strolling amid the 
mazes of the picturesque heath, with its alterna- 
tions of heath ered hills and flower-decked dales, 
its pretty pools, its braes of brambled gorse and 
pine, its tangle of countless paths. One will 
not wonder that it has been the resort of littera- 
teurs from the time of Dryden till now : Pope, 
Goldsmith, and Johnson loved to ramble here ; 
Hunt, Dickens, Collins, and Thackeray were fa- 
miliar with these shady paths ; Nichol, Besant, 
James, and Du Maurier are now to be seen among 
the walkers on the heath. A worn path bearing 
to the right conducts to the turf-carpeted vale 
where, in a little cottage whose site is now oc- 



Leigh Hunt — Jack Straw's Castle 

cupied by the inn, Leigh Hunt lived for some 
years. Such guests as Lamb, Hazlitt, Coleridge, 
Hood, and Cornwall came to this humble home, 
and here Shelley lovingly tended his dying 
" Adonais," Keats. Not far away lie the ponds 
of Pickwick's unwearied researches ; and in 
another corner of the common we find an 
ancient tavern bowered with shrubbery, in 
whose garden Addison and Steele oft sipped 
their ale of a summer evening, and where is still 
cherished a portion of a tree planted by Hogarth. 
On an elevation of the heath stands "Jack 
Straw's Castle," believed to mark the place of 
encampment of that rebel chieftain with his 
mob of peasantry. It is a curious old structure, 
with wainscoted walls, and was especially favored 
by Dickens, who often dined here with Maclise 
and Forster and read to them his MSS. or 
counselled with them concerning his plots. 
Out on the heath near by was found the corpse 
of Sadlier the speculator, who, after bankrupting 
thousand's of confiding dupes, committed suicide 
here; his career suggested to Dickens the 
Merdle and his complaint of ** Little Dorrit." 
Among the embowered dwellings beyond West 
Heath we find that in which Chatham was 
self-immured, the cottage in which Mrs. Coven- 
try Patmore — the Angel in the House — died, 
the place where Crabbe sojourned with Hoare. 
19 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

This vicinage has been the delight of artists from 
the time of Gainsborough, and is still a favorite 
sketching ground : here lived Collins and Blake, 
and Constable dwelt not far away. The author 
of " Trilby," who has recently taken front rank 
in the literary profession, has long had home 
and studio in a picturesque ivy-grown brick 
mansion of many angles and turrets, in a quiet 
street upon the other side of the hill ; here 
among his treasures of art he is engaged upon a 
third book soon to be published. 

The highway which leads north from Jack 
Straw's affords an exhilarating walk, with a 
superb prospect upon either hand, and brings 
us to the historic Spaniard's Inn, a pleasant 
wayside resort decked with vines and flowers, 
where pedestrians stop for refreshments. Dick- 
ens oft came to this place, and here we see the 
shady garden, with its tables and seats, where 
Mrs. Bardell held with her cronies the mild 
revel which was interrupted by the arrest of the 
widow for the costs in Bardell vs. Pickwick. 
The quiet of this ancient inn was disturbed one 
night by a fierce band of Gordon rioters, who 
rushed up the paths of the heath on their way 
to Mansfield's house, and stopped here to drink 
or destroy the contents of the inn-cellars, — an 
occurrence which is graphically described by 
Dickens in the looting of the Maypole Inn of 



The Spaniard's — Home of Coleridge 

Willet, in " Barnaby Rudge." Next to the 
Spaniard's once lived Erskine, and among the 
grand beeches of Caen Wood we see the house 
of Mansfield, where the daughter of Mary- 
Montagu was mistress, and where illustrious 
guests like Pope, Southey, and Coleridge were 
entertained. 

A farther walk through the noble wood 
brings us to the delightful suburb of Highgate, 
where we now vainly seek the Arundel House 
where the great Bacon died and find only the 
site of the simple cottage where Marvell, the 
" British Aristides," lived and wrote. The last 
home of the author of '* Ancient Mariner" is 
in a row of pleasant houses on a shady street 
called The Grove, a little way from the high 
street, which was in Coleridge's time the great 
Northern coach-road from London. The house 
is a neat brick structure of two stories, in which 
we may see the room where the poet lodged 
and where he breathed out his melancholy life. 
A pretty little patch of turf is in front of the 
dwelling, a larger garden, beloved by the poet, 
is at the back, and the trees which border the 
foot-walk were planted in his lifetime. To this 
cosy refuge he came to reside with his friends 
the Gilmans ; here he was visited by Hunt, who 
once lodged in the next street, Lamb, Hazlitt, 
Wordsworth, Shelley, De guincey, and others 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

of like fame ; and here, for nineteen years, 
"afflicted with manifold infirmities," he con- 
tinued \he struggle against a baneful habit, which 
ended only with his life. His grave was made 
not far away, in a portion of the church-yard 
which has since been overbuilt by a school, 
among whose crypt-like under-arches we find 
the tomb of stone, lying in pathetic and perpet- 
ual twilight, where the poet sleeps well without 
the lethean drug which ruined his life. On this 
hill lived " Copperfield" with Dora, and at its 
foot is the stone where Whittington sat and 
heard the bells recall him to London. 

On the slope toward the city is the most 
beautiful of the London cemeteries, with a 
wealth of verdure and bloom. Within its 
hallowed shades lie the ashes of many whose 
memories are more fragrant than the flowers 
that deck their graves. In a beautiful spot 
which was beloved by the sweet singer in life 
we find the tomb of Parepa Rosa, tended by 
loving hands ; not far away, among the mourn- 
ing cypresses, lie Lyndhurst and the great Fara- 
day. A plain tombstone erected by Dickens 
marks the sepulchre of his parents, and by it 
lies his daughter Dora, her gravestone bearing 
now, besides her simple epitaph prepared by 
her father, the name of the novelist himself and 
the names of two of his sons. Here, too, is 



Grave of George Eliot 

the grave of Rossetti's young wife, whence his 
famous poems were exhumed. Among the many 
tombs of the enclosure, the one to which most 
pilgrims come is that of the immortal author of 
" Romola." On a verdant slope we find the 
spot where, upon a cold and stormy day which 
tested the affection of her friends, the mortal 
part of George Eliot was covered with flowers 
and lovingly laid beside the husband of her 
youth. Wreaths of flowers conceal the mound, 
and out of it rises a monument of gray granite 
bearing her name and years and the lines 

" Of those immortal dead who live again 
In minds made better by their presence." 

From the terraces above her bed we look over 
the busy metropolis, astir with its myriad pulses 
of life and passion, while its rumble and din 
sound in our ears in a murmurous monotone. 
As we linger amid the lengthening shadows until 
the sunset glory fades out of the sky above the 
heath and the lights of London gleam mistily 
through the smoke, we rejoice that we find the 
tomb of George Eliot, not in the aisles of 
Westminster, where some would have laid her, 
but in this open place, where the winds sigh a 
requiem through the swaying boughs, the birds 
swirl and twitter in the free azure above, and the 
silent stars nightly watch over her grave. 
*3 



BY SOUTHWARK AND 
THAMES-SIDE TO CHELSEA 

Chaucer - Shakespeare - Dickens - JValpole - Pepys - Eliot - 
Rossetti - Carlyle - Hunt - Gay - Smollett - Kingsley - 
Herbert - Dorset - Addison - Shaftesbury - Locke - Bo- 
lingbroke — Pope — Richardson, etc. 

TF our way to Southwark be that of the pil- 
grims of Chaucer's time, by the London 
Bridge, we have on our right the dark reach of 
river where Lizzie Hexam was discovered in the 
opening of " Our Mutual Friend," rowing the 
boat of the bird of prey ; on the right, too, we 
see the Iron Bridge where '* Little Dorrit" dis- 
missed young Chivery ; and a few steps bring 
us to a scene of another of Dickens's romances, 
the landing-stairs at the end of London Bridge, 
where Nancy had the interview with " Oliver 
Twist's" friends which cost the outcast her life. 
Here, too, the boy Dickens used to await ad- 
mission to the Marshalsea, often in company 
with the little servant of his father's family who 
figures in his fiction as the <f orfling" of the Mi- 
cawber household and the " Marchioness" of 
the Brass establishment in Bevis Marks. In the 
adjacent church of St. Saviour, part of which 
was standing when the Father of English poetry 
sojourned in the near Tabard inn, is the effigied 
tomb of the poet Gower, a friend of Chaucer ; 
*4 



The Tabard — White Hart — Marshalsea 

here also lie buried Shakespeare's brother Ed- 
mund, an actor ; Fletcher the dramatist, who 
lived close by ; and Lawrence Fletcher, copar- 
cener of Shakespeare in the Globe Theatre, 
which stood near at hand, on a portion of the 
site of the brewery which Dr. Johnson, ex- 
ecutor of his friend Thrale, sold to Barclay and 
Perkins. The extensions of this establishment 
now cover the site of a church where Baxter 
preached, and the sepulchre of Cruden, author 
of the " Concordance." In near-by Zoar Street, 
Bunyan preached in a large chapel near the Fal- 
con tavern, which was a resort of Shakespeare. 
Of the Tabard inn, whence Chaucer's Canter- 
bury company set out, the pilgrim of to-day finds 
naught save the name on the sign of the new tavern 
which marks its site on Borough High Street ; 
and the picturesque White Hart, which stood 
near by — an inn known to Shakespeare and men- 
tioned in his dramas — where Jingle of " Pick- 
wick," eloping with Miss Wardle, was over- 
taken and Sam Weller discovered, was not long 
ago degraded into a vulgar dram-shop. Near St. 
Thomas's Church in this neighborhood for- 
merly stood the hospital in which Akenside was 
physician and Keats a student. A little farther 
along the High Street we come to a passage at 
the left leading into a paved yard which was the 
court of the Marshalsea, and the high wall at 
*5 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

the right is believed to have been a part of the 
old prison where Dickens's father was confined 
in the rooms which the novelist assigns to Wil- 
liam Dorrit, and where " Little Dorrit" was 
born and reared. In this court the Dickens 
children played, and under yonder pump by the 
wall Pancks cooled his head on a memorable 
occasion. Just beyond is St. George's Church, 
where " Little Dorrit" was baptized and mar- 
ried, with its vestry where she once slept with 
the register under her head; adjoining is the 
church-yard, once overlooked by the prison- 
windows of Dickens and Dorrit, where the dis- 
consolate young Chivery expected to be un- 
timely laid under a lugubrious epitaph. Another 
block brings us to dingy Lant Street — " out of 
Hight Street, right side the way" — where the boy 
Dickens lived in the back attic of the same 
shabby house in which Bob Sawyer afterward 
lodged and gave the party to Pickwick. Be- 
yond the next turning stood King's Bench 
Prison, where Micawber was incarcerated by his 
stony-hearted creditors, and beyond this again 
we come to the tabernacle where Spurgeon 
preached. Turning at the site of Micawber's 
prison, the Borough Road conducts us, by the 
sponging-house where Hook was confined, to 
the Christ Church of Newman Hall, — successor 
to Rowland Hill : it is a beautiful edifice, erected 
26 



Thames-Side — Shop of Jenny Wren 

largely by contributions from America, its hand- 
some tower being designed as a monument to 
Abraham Lincoln and marked by a memorial 
tablet. A little way southward, we find among 
the buildings of Lambeth Palace the library of 
which Green, the historian of the " English 
People," was long custodian, and the ancient 
room where Essex and the poet Lovelace were 
imprisoned. 

Recrossing Father Thames and passing the 
oft-described shrines of Westminster we come to 
Millbank, the region into which Copperfield 
and Peggotty followed the wretched Martha 
and saved her from suicide. Out of Millbank 
Street, a few steps by a little thoroughfare 
bring us into the somnolent Smith Square in 
which stands the grotesque church of St. John, 
where Churchill once preached, — described in 
" Our Mutual Friend" as a " very hideous 
church with four towers, resembling some petri- 
fied monster on its back with its legs in the air." 
To this place came Charley Hexam and his 
school-master and Wrayburn, for here in front 
of the church, at a house near the corner, Lizzie 
Hexam — the best of all Dickens's women — 
lodged with Jenny Wren. It was a little house 
of two stories, and its dingy front room — the 
shop of the dolls' dress-maker — later was used 
as a cheap restaurant, where we once regaled 
27 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

ourselves with a dish of equivocal tea while we 
looked about us and recognized the half-door 
across which Wrayburn indolently leaned as he 
chatted with Lizzie, the seat in front of the wide 
window where Jenny sat at her work with her 
crutch leaning against the wall, the corner to 
which she consigned her " bad old child" in his 
drunken disgrace, the stairs which led to 
Lizzie's chamber, — objects all noted by the ob- 
servant glance of Dickens as he peered for a 
moment through the door-way. Sauntering 
southward by Grosvenor Road, where Lizzie 
walked with her brother and Headstone, we 
have beside us on the left the river, glinting and 
shimmering in the morning sunlight and alive 
with every sort of craft that plies for trade or 
pleasure. It was along these curving reaches of 
the Thames that the merry parties of the olden 
time, destined like ourselves to Chelsea, used to 
row over the miles that then intervened between 
London and the ancient village, and here, too, 
Franklin, then a printer in Bartholomew Close, 
once swam the entire distance from Chelsea to 
Blackfriars Bridge. The way along which we 
are strolling then lay in the open country, with 
leafy lanes leading aside among groves and sun- 
flecked fields. But woods and fields have dis- 
appeared under compact masses of brick and 
mortar, and the quaint old suburb is linked to 
28 



Old Chelsea— Walpole 

the city by continuous streets and structures. 
Contact has not altogether destroyed the dis- 
tinctive features of the ancient suburb, and we 
know when our walk has brought us to its bor- 
ders. Few of its thoroughfares retain the 
dreamful quiet of the olden time, few of its rows 
of sombre and dignified dwellings have wholly 
escaped the modern eruption of ornate and 
staring architecture ; the old and the new are 
curiously blended, but enough of the former 
remains to remind us that Chelsea is olden and 
not modern, and to revive for us the winsome 
associations with which the place is permeated. 
The suggestion of worshipful antiquity is seen 
in sedate, ivy entwined mansions of dusky-hued 
brick, in carefully kept old trees which in their 
saplinghood knew Pepys, Johnson, or Smollett, 
in quaint inns whose homely comforts were en- 
joyed by illustrious habitues in the long ago. 

Our stroll beyond the Grosvenor Road brings 
us to the famous " Chelsea Physick Garden," 
presented to the Apothecaries' Society by Sloane, 
the founder of the British Museum, who was 
a medical student here; it was to this garden 
that Polyphilus of the " Rambler" was going to 
see a new plant in flower when he was diverted 
by meeting the chancellor's coach. At the 
adjoining hospital dwelt the gifted Mrs. Somer- 
ville, whose husband was a physician there; 
29 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

and the ancient mansion of dingy brick, in 
which Walpole lived, and where Pope, Swift, 
Gay, and Mary Wortley Montagu were guests, 
is a portion of the infirmary, — the great draw- 
ing-room in which the brilliant company met 
being a hospital ward. A little way northward, 
by Sloane Street, we come to Hans Place, where, 
at No. 25, the sweet poetess Letitia Landon 
(" L. E. L.") was born in a tiny two-storied 
house ; she attended school in a similar house of 
the same row, where Miss Mitford and the 
authoress of " Glenarvon" had before been 
pupils. Along the river again we find beyond 
the hospital a passage leading to the place of 
Paradise Row, where, in a little brick house, 
the witching Mancini was visited by Charles 
II. and poetized by the brilliant Evremond. 
Here, at the corner of Robinson's Lane, Pepys 
visited Robarte in " the prettiest contrived 
house" the diarist ever saw ; not far away a 
comfortable old inn occupies the site of the 
dwelling of the historian Faulkner, in the 
neighborhood where the essayist Mary Astell 
— ridiculed by Swift, Addison, Steele, Smollett, 
and Congreve — had her modest home. Robert 
Walpole's later residence stood near Queen's 
Road West, and its grounds sloped to the river 
just below the Swan Tavern, near the bottom 
of the lane now called Swan Walk. It was at 
30 



Homes of George Eliot and Rossetti 

this river inn that Pepys " got affright" on being 
told of an eruption of the plague in Chelsea. 

For a half-mile or so westward from the Swan, 
picturesque Cheyne Walk — beloved of the liter- 
ati — stretches along the river-bank. Its many 
old houses, with their solemn-visaged fronts 
overlooking the river, their iron railings, dusky 
walls, tiled roofs, and curious dormer-windows, 
are impressive survivors of a past age. At No. 
4, a substantial brick house of four stories, with 
battlemented roof and with oaken carvings in 
the rooms, are preserved some relics of George 
Eliot, for this was her last home, and here she 
breathed out her life in the same room where 
Maclise, friend of Carlyle and Dickens, had 
died just a decade before. No. 16, a spacious 
dwelling with curved front and finely wrought 
iron railing and gate-way, was the home of Ros- 
setti for the twenty years preceding his death. 
With these panelled rooms, which he filled with 
quaint and beautiful objects of art, are asso- 
ciated most of the memories of the gifted poet 
and painter. The large lower room was his 
studio, where one of his last occupations was 
painting a replica of ** Beata Beatrix," the por- 
trait of his wife, whose tragic death darkened 
his life. Around the fireplace in this room a 
brilliant company held the nightly seances which 
a participant styles feasts of the gods. Through 
3* 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

the passage at the side the famous zebu was 
conveyed, and reconveyed after his assault upon 
the poet in the garden. The rooms above were 
sometime tenanted by Meredith, Swinburne, 
and Rossetti's brother and biographer, who was 
also Whitman's editor and advocate. Later, 
the essayist Watts, to whom Rossetti dedicated 
his greatest work, resided here to cherish his 
friend. The garden, where Rossetti kept his 
odd pets and where neighbors remember to 
have seen him walking in paint-bedaubed attire 
for hours together, is now mostly covered by a 
school. At first, many luminaries of letters and art 
came to him here, — Jones, Millais, Hunt, Gosse, 
Browning, Whistler, Morris, Oliver Madox 
Brown, whose death elicited Rossetti's " Un- 
timely Lost," and others like them ; later, when 
baneful narcotics had sadly changed his tempera- 
ment, he dwelt in seclusion, exercising only in 
his garden and seeing such devoted friends as 
Watts, Knight, Hake, " The Manxman" Hall 
Caine, and the gifted sister, author of " Goblin 
Market," etc., who was pictured by Rossetti in 
his " Girlhood of Mary Virgin," and who 
lately died. In his study here he produced his 
best work ; here he revised the poems exhumed 
from his wife's grave and wrote " The Stream's 
Secret" and other parts of the volume which 
made his fame and occasioned the battle between 
32 



Carlyle's House — Smollett — Gay 

the bards Buchanan and Swinburne ; here he 
wrote the magnificent " Rose Mary," M White 
Ship," etc., and completed the series of sonnets 
which has been pronounced " in its class the 
greatest gift poetry has received since Shake- 
speare." 

No. 1 8 was the famous coffee-house and bar- 
ber-shop of Sloane's servant Salter, — called " Don 
Saltero" by Gay, Evremond, Steele, Smollett, 
and the other wits who frequented his place. 
On the Embankment by this Cheyne Walk we 
find the statue of Carlyle ; behind it is the dull 
little lane of Cheyne Row, whose quiet Carlyle 
thought " hardly inferior to Craigenputtock," 
and here at No. 5, later 24, a plain three-storied 
house of sullied brick, — even more dingy than 
its neighbors, — the pessimistic sage lived, wrote, 
and scolded for half a century. All the wain- 
scoted rooms are bare and cheerless, but the 
memory-haunted study seems most depressing as 
we stand at Carlyle's hearth-stone and look upon 
the spot where he sat to write his many books. 
The garden was a pleasanter place, with bright 
flowers his wife planted, and the tree under 
which he loved to smoke and chat. Here 
Tennyson lounged with him, devoted to a long 
pipe and longer discourse ; here Froude oft 
found him on the daily visits which enabled 
him to picture the seer, " warts and all ;" here 
c 33 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

Dickens, Maclise, and Hunt saw him at his best, 
and here the latter wrote "Jenny Kissed Me," 
— Jenny being Mrs. Carlyle. To Carlyle in 
this sombre home came Emerson, Ruskin, Tyn- 
dal, and a host of friends and disciples from all 
lands, and hither will come an endless proces- 
sion of admirers, for it is planned to restore 
Carlyle's belongings to these rooms and preserve 
the place as a memorial of the stern philosopher. 
Around the corner Hunt lived, in the curious 
little house Carlyle described, and here he 
studied and wrote in the upper front room. On 
the next block of the same street stood the 
home of Smollett, which was removed the year 
that Carlyle came to dwell in the vicinage. It 
was a spacious mansion which had been the 
Lawrence manor-house. Smollett wrote here 
" Count Fathom," " Clinker," and " Launcelot 
Greaves," and finished Hume's " England." 
Here Garrick, Johnson, Sterne, and other starry 
spirits were his guests, and here later lived the 
poet Gay and wrote " The Shepherd's Week," 
" Rural Sports," and part of his comedies. In 
the cellars of some of the houses at the top of 
Lawrence Street may be seen remains of the 
ovens of the once famous Chelsea china-factory, 
where Dr. Johnson wrought for some time vainly 
trying to master the art of china-making, — his 
pieces always cracking in the oven : a service of 
34 



Kingsley — Herbert — Dorset 

china "presented to him by the factorymen here 
was preserved in Holland House. A taste- 
ful Queen Anne mansion with beautiful interior 
decorations, not far from the Carlyle house, was 
a domicile of the poet and aesthete Oscar Wilde. 
In the picturesque rectory of St. Luke's, a few 
rods north from Cheyne Row, the author of 
" Hypatia" and his scarcely less famed brother 
Henry, of " Ravenshoe," lived as boys, their 
father being the incumbent of the parish. 
Henry Kingsley presents, in his " Hillyars and 
Burtons," charming sketches of Chelsea as it 
existed in his boyhood. Overlooking the river 
at the foot of the adjoining street, we find Chel- 
sea Church, one of the most curious and inter- 
esting of London's many fanes, albeit partially 
disfigured by modern changes. In its pulpit 
Donne, the poet-divine, preached at the funeral 
of the mother of George Herbert ; at its altar 
the dramatist Colman was married. Among its 
many monuments we find the mural tablet of 
Sir Thomas More, a marble slab with an in- 
scription by himself which formerly described 
him as " harassing to thieves, murderers, and 
heretics." Here lie the ancestors of the poet 
Sidney, and in the little church-yard are the 
graves of Shadwell the laureate, who died just 
back of the church, of the publisher of "Ju- 
nius," and of a brother of Fielding. Leading 
35 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

back from the river here is Church Street, on 
which dwelt Swift, Atterbury, and Arbuthnot, 
while Steele had a little house near by. The 
next street is named for Sir John Danvers, whose 
house was at the top of the little street : his 
wife was the mother of the poet Herbert, who 
dwelt here for a time and wrote some of his 
earlier poems ; Donne and the amiable angler 
Izaak Walton were frequent guests of Herbert's 
mother in this place. The adjacent street marks 
the place of Beaufort House, the palatial resi- 
dence of Sir Thomas More, where he was 
visited by his much-married monarch ; where 
the learned and colloquial author of " En- 
comium Moriae," Erasmus, was sometime an 
inmate ; and where, decades later, Thomas 
Sackville, Earl Dorset, wrote the earliest English 
tragedy, " Gorboduc." A time-worn structure 
between King's Road and the Thames was once 
the home of the bewitching Nell Gwynne, and 
in later years " became (not inappropriately) a 
gin-temple," as Carlyle said : this old edifice 
was also sometime occupied by Addison. Back 
of King's Road we find the venerable Shaftes- 
bury House, — in which the famous earl wrote 
" Characteristics," Locke began his " Essay," 
and Addison produced some of his Spectator 
papers, — long transformed into a workhouse, in 
the grounds of which we are shown the place 
36 



Shaftesbury — Bolingbroke 

of " Locke's yew," recently removed. The Old 
World's End Tavern, by Riley Street, was the 
notorious resort of Congreve's " Love for 
Love ;" the once ill-famed Cremorne Gardens, 
just beyond, were erst part of the estate of a 
granddaughter of William Penn, who was related 
to the Penns of Stoke-Pogis, where Gray wrote 
the "Elegy." A near-by little ivy-grown brick 
house, with wide windows in its front and an 
iron balcony upon its roof, was long the home 
of Turner, and in the upper room, through 
whose arched window he could look out upon 
the river, he died. From the water-edge here 
we see, upon the opposite shore, the old church 
where Blake was married and Bolingbroke was 
buried, and from whose vestry window Turner 
made his favorite sketches ; near by is a portion 
of the ancient house where Bolingbroke was 
born and died, where he entertained such guests 
as Chesterfield, Swift, and Pope, and where the 
latter wrote part of the " Essay on Man." 
Beyond Chelsea we find at Fulham the spot 
where lived and died Richardson, who is said to 
have written " Clarissa Harlowe" here ; and, 
near the river, the place of the home of Hook, 
and his mural tablet in the old church by which 
he lies, near the grave of the poet Vincent 
Bourne. Our ramble by Thames-side may be 
pleasantly prolonged through a region rife with 
37 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

the associations we esteem most precious. Our 
way lies among the sometime haunts of Cowley, 
Bulwer, Pepys, Thomson, Marryat, Pope, 
Hogarth, Tennyson, Fielding, "Junius," Gar- 
rick, and many another shining one. Some of 
kindred genius dwell now incarnate in this mem- 
ory-haunted district by the river-side, — the gifted 
Miss Braddon, the erudite Stephens, the radical 
Labouchere, now living in Pope's famous villa, — 
but it is the memory of the mighty dead that 
impresses us as we saunter amid the scenes they 
loved and which inspired or witnessed the work 
for which the world gives them honor and 
homage ; we find their accustomed resorts, the 
rural habitations where many of them dwelt and 
died, the dim church aisles or the turf-grown 
graves where they are laid at last in the dream- 
less sleep whose waking we may not know. 



38 



THE SCENE OF GRAYS 
ELEGY 



The Country Church- Yard - Tomb of Gray — Stoke-Pogis 
Church - Reverie and Reminiscence — Scenes of Mi/ton — 
Waller - Porter - Coke - Denham. 

/^UR visit to the country church-yard where 
^"^ the ashes of Gray repose amid the scenes 
his muse immortalized is the culmination and the 
fitting end of a literary pilgrimage westward from 
London to Windsor and the nearer shrines of 
Thames-vale. Our way has led us to the some- 
time homes of Pope, Fielding, Shelley, Garrick, 
Burke, Richardson ; to the birthplaces of Waller 
and Gibbon, the graves of "Junius," Hogarth, 
Thomson, and Penn ; to the cottage where Jane 
Porter wrote her wondrous tales, and the ivy- 
grown church where Tennyson was married. 
Nearer the scene of the " Elegy" we visit other 
shrines : the Horton where Milton wrote his 
earlier works, " Masque of Comus," " Lycidas," 
" Arcades ;" the Hallbarn where Waller com- 
posed the panegyric to Cromwell, the " Con- 
gratulation," and other once famous poems ; the 
mansion where the Herschels studied and wrote. 
We have had the gray spire of Stoke-Pogis 
Church in view during this last day of our ram- 
ble. From the summit of the " Cooper's Hill" 
39 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

of Denham's best-known poem, from the battle- 
ments of Windsor and the windows of Eton, 
from the elm-shaded meads that border the 
Thames and the fields redolent of lime-trees and 
new-mown hay where we loitered, we have had 
tempting glimpses of that " ivy-mantled tower" 
that made us wish the winged hours more swift ; 
for we have purposely deferred our visit to that 
sacred spot so that the even-tide and the hour 
the curfew tolled " the knell of parting day" 
across this peaceful landscape may find us amid 
the old graves where " the rude forefathers of 
the hamlet sleep." As we approach through ver- 
dant lanes bordered by fields where the plough- 
man is yet at his toil and the herds feed among the 
buttercups, the abundant ivy upon the tower 
gleams in the light of the declining sun, and the 
"yew-tree's shade" falls far aslant upon the 
mouldering turf-heaps. The sequestered God's- 
acre, consecrated by the genius of Gray, lies in 
languorous solitude, far removed from the high- 
way and within the precincts of a grand park 
once the possession of descendants of Penn. 
Just without the enclosure stands a cenotaph 
erected by John Penn, grandson of the founder 
of Pennsylvania ; it represents a sarcophagus and 
is ostensibly commemorative of Gray, but, as has 
been said, it " resembles nothing so much as a 
huge tea-caddy," and its inscription celebrates the 
40 



The Country Church-Yard 

builder more than the bard. Within the church- 
yard all is rest and peace ; the strife and fever 
of life intrude not here ; no sound of the busy- 
world breaks in upon the hush that pervades this 
spot, and '* all the air a solemn stillness holds. " 
Something of the serenity which here pervades 
earth and sky steals into and uplifts the soul, and 
the demons of greed and passion are subdued 
and silenced as we stand above the tomb of Gray 
and realize all the imagery of the " Elegy." 
While our hearts are thrilling with the associa- 
tions of the place and the hour, while the ashes 
of the tender poet rest at our feet and the objects 
that inspired the matchless poem surround us, 
we may hope to share in some measure the ten- 
derer emotions to which the contemplation of 
this scene stirred his soul. As we ponder these 
objects, upon which his loving vision lingered, 
they seem strangely familiar; we feel that we 
have known them long and will love them 
alway. 

One must visit this spot if he would appre- 
ciate the absolute fidelity to nature of the 
«' Elegy :" its imagery is the exact reproduction 
of the scene lying about us, which is practically 
unchanged since that time so long ago when 
Gray drafted his poem here. Above us rises 
the square tower, mantled with ivy and sur- 
mounted by a tapering spire whose shadow now 
4» 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

falls athwart the grave of the poet ; here are the 
rugged elms with their foliage swaying in the 
summer breeze above the lowly graves ; yonder 
by the church porch is the dark yew whose 
opaque shade covers the site of the poet's ac- 
customed seat on the needle-carpeted sward ; 
around us are scattered the mouldering heaps 
beneath which, " each in his narrow cell for- 
ever laid," sleep the rustic dead. Some of the 
humble mounds are unmarked by any token of 
memory or grief, but many bear the " frail 
memorials," often rude slabs of wood, which 
loving but unskilled hands have graven with 
" uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture," with 
the names and years of the unhonored dead, 
and " many a holy text that teach the rustic 
moralist to die." Some of these lowly graves 
hold the forefathers of families who, not con- 
tent with the sequestered vale of life which 
sufficed for these simple folk, have sought on 
another shore largesses of fame or fortune un- 
attainable here. Among the names " spelled by 
the unlettered muse" upon the stones around 
us we see those of Goddard, Perry, Gould, 
Cooper, Geer, and many others familiar to our 
American ears. The overarching glades of the 
woods which skirt the sacred precinct were the 
haunt of the " youth to fortune and to fame 
unknown ;" the nodding beech, that " wreathes 
42 



Tomb of Gray 

its old fantastic roots so high" in the grove at 
near-by Burnham, was his favorite tree, as it was 
that of Gray ; afar through the haze of a golden 
after-glow we see the "antique towers" of 
Eton, the stately brow of Windsor, with its 
royal battlements, and nearer the wave of woods 
and fields and all the dream-like beauty of the 
landscape upon which the eyes of Gray so often 
dwelt, a landscape that literally glimmers in the 
fading light. 

A tablet set by Penn in the chancel wall 
beneath the mullioned window is inscribed, 
" Opposite this stone, in the same tomb upon 
which he so feelingly recorded his grief at the 
loss of a beloved parent, are deposited the re- 
mains of Thomas Gray, author of the Elegy 
written in a Country Church-yard." A few feet 
distant is the tomb he erected for his mother, 
which now conceals the ashes of the gentle 
poet. It is of the plainest and simplest, a low 
structure of brick, covered by a marble slab. 
No '* storied urn or animated bust" is needed to 
perpetuate the name of him who made himself 
immortal ; even his name is not graven upon the 
marble. We are come directly from the splen- 
dors of the royal chapels of Windsor, where 
costly sculpture, gilding, and superlative epi- 
taphs mark the sepulchres of some who were 
mediocre or mendicant of mind and virtue, and 
43 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

we are, therefore, the more impressed by the 
fitting simplicity of the poet's tomb among the 
humble dead whose artless tale he told. At 
the grave of Gray, how tawdry seems the pomp 
of those kingly mausoleums, how mean some 
of the lives the bedizened monuments commem- 
orate, of how little consequence that the world 
should know where such dust is hid from sight ! 
At the grave of Gray, if anywhere the wide 
world round, we will correctly value the vanities, 
ambitions, and rewards of earth. Gray's desire 
to be buried here saved him from what some 
one has called the " misfortune of burial in 
Westminster." While the pilgrim vainly seeks 
in that national mausoleum the tombs of Shake- 
speare, Milton, Byron, Gray, Wordsworth, 
Thackeray, Coleridge, Eliot, and others of di- 
vine genius, and finds instead the graves of many 
sordid and impure, entombment there may be a 
misfortune. Happily the poet of the Elegy 
reposes in his church-yard, beside the beings he 
best loved, on the spot he frequented in life and 
hallowed by his genius, among those whose 
virtues he sang ; here his grave perpetually em- 
phasizes the sublime teachings of his verse and 
affords a most touching association. The only 
inscription upon the slab is the poet's tribute to 
his aunt, Mary Antrobus, and to " Dorothy 
Gray, the careful and tender mother of many 
44 



The Ivy-Mantled Church 

children, of whom one alone had the misfortune 
to survive her." It has been our pleasure on a 
previous day to seek out amid the din of London 
the spot where, in a modest dwelling, this 
mother gave birth to the poet, and where she 
and Mary Antrobus sold laces to maintain the 
"many children." 

Set upon a gentle eminence in the midst of 
this peaceful scene, the church has a picturesque 
beauty which harmonizes well with its environ- 
ment. It is low and sombre, but age has given 
a dignity and grace which would make it attrac- 
tive apart from its associations. Overrunning 
the walls, shrouding the crumbling battlements 
of the tower, clambering along the steep roofs, 
clinging to the highest gables, and festooning the 
stained windows, are masses of dark ivy, which 
conceal the inroads of time and impart to the 
whole structure a beauty that wins us com- 
pletely. The tower is early English, the chan- 
cel is Norman, and the newer portions of the 
edifice were already old when Gray frequented 
the place. A path bordered by abundant roses 
leads from the gate-way of the enclosure to the 
quaint porch of timbers and the entrance to the 
church. Within, the light falls dimly at this 
hour upon the curious little galleries of the 
peasantry, the great pew of the Penns, the 
humbler place at the end of the south aisle where 
45 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

Gray came to pray, the huge mural tablet and 
the burial vault where the son of William Penn 
and his family sleep in death. In the park close 
by is the palace of the Penns, and the mansion 
where Charles I. was imprisoned and where 
Coke wrote some of his Commentaries and enter- 
tained his queen. Not far distant is the house 
— now a fine abode — which Gray shared for 
some years with his mother and aunt, and where 
his bedroom and study may still be seen. Far- 
ther away are the Beaconsfield which furnished 
the title of the gifted author of " Lothair," and 
the old church where Burke and Waller await 
the resurrection. 

In the twilight we hastily sketch Gray's u ivy- 
mantled tower," and then sit by his tomb gazing 
upon the fading landscape and recalling the life 
of this divine poet and the lines of the match- 
less poem which was drafted here and with ex- 
quisite care revised and polished year after year 
before it was given to the world. It may not 
be generally known that he discarded six stanzas 
from the original draft, — among them this, writ- 
ten as the fourth stanza : 



" Hark, how the sacred calm that breathes around 
Bids every fierce, tumultuous passion cease ; 
In still small accents whispering from the ground 
A grateful earnest of eternal peace } ' ' 
46 



Discarded Stanzas 
this, from the reply of the " hoary-headed 



11 Him have we seen the greenwood side along 

While o'er the heath we hied, our labor done, 
Oft as the wood-lark piped her farewell song 
With wistful eyes pursue the setting sunj" 

and this, from the description of the poet's 
grave : 

" There scattered oft, the earliest of the year, 

By hands unseen, are showers of violets found j 
The redbreast loves to build and warble there, 
And little footsteps lightly print the ground." 

We may judge what was the high standard of 
Gray, and what the transcending quality of the 
finished poem from which its author could, 
after years of deliberation, reject such stanzas. 
The Elegy is the expression in divinest poetry 
of the best conceptions of a noble soul upon 
the most serious topic on which human thought 
can dwell. No wonder that the world has 
literally learned by heart those precious lines ; 
that they are the solace of the thoughtful and 
the bereft in every clime where mortals meditate 
on death ; that the brave Wolfe, on the way to 
his triumphal death, should recite them in the 
darkness and declare he had rather be their 
author than the victor in the morrow's battle ; 
47 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

that the great Webster, on his death-bed, should 
beg to hear them, and die at last with their 
melody sounding in his ears. 

As the glow fades out of the darkening sky, 
the birds in the leafy elms one by one cease 
their songs, " the lowing herds wind slowly 
o'er the lea" to distant folds, the " drowsy 
tinklings" grow fainter, the summer wind sigh- 
ing among the trees dies with the day, and the 
scene which seemed still before is noiseless now. 
In this hush we are content to leave this death- 
less poet and the spot he loved. We gather ivy 
from the old wall and a spray from the boughs 
of his dreaming yew, and take our way back to 
the busy haunts of men. 



DICKENSLAND: GAD'S HILL 
AND ABOUT 



Chaucer'' s Pilgrims-Falstaff-Dickens' s Abode-Study-Grounds 
—Walks — Neighbors— Guests — Scenes of Tales — Cobham— 
Rochester- Pip's Church- Yard-Satis House, etc. 

" 'TpO go to Gad's Hill," said Dickens, in a 
note of invitation, " you leave Charing 
Cross at nine o'clock by North Kent Railway 
for Higham." Guided by these directions and 
equipped with a letter from Dickens's son, we 
find ourselves gliding eastward among the chim- 
neys of London and, a little later, emerging into 
the fields of Kent, — Jingle's region of " apples, 
cherries, hops, and women." The Thames is 
on our left ; we pass many river-towns, — Dart- 
ford where Wat Tyler lived, Gravesend where 
Pocahontas died, — but most of our way is through 
the open country, where we have glimpses of 
fields, parks, and leafy lanes, with here and 
there picturesque camps of gypsies or of peripa- 
tetic rascals " goin' a-hoppin'." From wretched 
Higham a walk of half an hour among orchards 
and between hedges of wild-rose and honey- 
suckle brings us to the hill which Shakespeare 
and Dickens have made classic ground, and soon 
we see, above the tree-tops, the glittering vane 
which surmounted the home of the world's 
d 49 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

greatest novelist. The name Gad's (vagabond's) 
Hill is a survival of the time when the depre- 
dations of highwaymen upon "pilgrims going 
to Canterbury with rich offerings and traders 
riding to London with fat purses" gave to this 
spot the ill repute it had in Shakespeare's day : 
it was here he located FalstafF's great exploit. 
The tuft of evergreens which crowns the hill 
about Dickens's retreat is the remnant of thick 
woods once closely bordering the highway, in 
which the "men in buckram" lay concealed, 
and the robbery of the franklin was committed 
in front of the spot where the Dickens house 
stands. By this road passed Chaucer, who had 
property near by, gathering from the pilgrims 
his " Canterbury Tales." In all time to come 
the great master of romance who came here to 
live and die will be worthily associated with 
Shakespeare and Chaucer in the renown of Gad's 
Hill. In becoming possessor of this place, 
Dickens realized a dream of his boyhood and 
an ambition of his life. In one of his travellers' 
sketches he introduces a " queer small boy" 
(himself) gazing at Gad's Hill House and pre- 
dicting his future ownership, which the author 
finds annoying " because it happens to be my 
house and I believe what he said was true." 
When at last the place was for sale, Dickens 
did not wait to examine it ; he never was inside 
5° 



Gad's Hill House 

the house until he went to direct its repair. 
Eighteen hundred pounds was the price ; a 
thousand more were expended for enlargement 
of the grounds and alterations of the house, 
which, despite his declaration that he had 
" stuck bits upon it in all manner of ways," 
did not greatly change it from what it was when 
it became the goal of his childish aspirations. 
At first it was his summer residence merely, — 
his wife came with him the first summer, — but 
three years later he sold Tavistock House, and 
Gad's Hill was thenceforth his home. From 
the bustle and din of the city he returned to the 
haunts of his boyhood to find restful quiet and 
time for leisurely work among these " blessed 
woods and fields" which had ever held his 
heart. For nine years after the death of Dick- 
ens Gad's Hill was occupied by his oldest son ; 
its ownership has since twice or thrice changed. 
Its elevated site and commanding view render 
it one of the most conspicuous, as it is one of 
the most lovely, spots in Kent. The mansion 
is an unpretentious, old-fashioned, two-storied 
structure of fourteen rooms. Its brick walls are 
surmounted by Mansard roofs above which rises 
a bell-turret ; a pillared portico, where Dickens 
sat with his family on summer evenings, shades 
the front entrance ; wide bay-windows project 
upon either side ; flowers and vines clamber 
5' 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

upon the walls, and a delightfully home-like air 
pervades the place. It seems withal a modest 
seat for one who left half a million dollars at his 
death. At the right of the entrance-hall we see 
Dickens's library and study, a cosy room shown 
in the picture of •* The Empty Chair :" here 
are shelves which held his books ; the panels he 
decorated with counterfeit book-backs ; the nook 
where perched the mounted remains of his 
raven, the " Grip" of " Barnaby Rudge." By 
this bay-window, whence he could look across 
the lawn to the cedars beyond the highway, 
stood his chair and the desk where he wrote 
many of the works by which the world will 
know him alway. Behind the study was his 
billiard-room, and upon the opposite side of the 
hall the parlor, with the dining-room adjoining 
it at the back, both bedecked with the many mir- 
rors which delighted the master. Opening out 
of these rooms is a conservatory, paid for out of 
" the golden shower from America" and com- 
pleted but a few days before Dickens's death, 
holding yet the ferns he tended. The dining- 
room was the scene of much of that emphatic 
hospitality which it pleased the novelist to dis- 
pense, his exuberant spirits making him the 
leader in all the jollity and conviviality of the 
board. Here he compounded for bibulous 
guests his famous " cider-cup of Gad's Hill," 
5* 



Gad's Hill — House and Grounds 

and at the same table he was stricken with death ; 
on a couch beneath yonder window, the one 
nearest the hall, he died on the anniversary of 
the railway accident which so frightfully im- 
perilled his life. From this window we look 
out upon a lawn decked with shrubbery and see 
across undulating cornfields his beloved Cob- 
ham. From the parquetted hall, stairs lead 
to the modest chambers, — that of Dickens being 
above the drawing-room. He lined the stair- 
way with prints of Hogarth's works, and de- 
clared he never came down the stairs without 
pausing to wonder at the sagacity and skill 
which had produced the masterful pictures of 
human life. The house is invested with roses, 
and parterres of the red geraniums which the 
master loved are ranged upon every side. It 
was some fresh manifestation of his passion for 
these flowers that elicited from his daughter the 
averment, M Papa, I think when you are an 
angel your wings will be made of looking- 
glasses and your crown of scarlet geraniums." 
Beneath a rose-tree not far from the window 
where Dickens died, a bed blooming with blue 
lobelia holds the tiny grave of " Dick" and the 
tender memorial of the novelist to that " Best 
of Birds." The row of gleaming limes which 
shadow the porch was planted by Dickens's 
own hands. The pedestal of the sundial upon 
S3 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

the lawn is a massive balustrade of the old stone 
bridge at near-by Rochester, which little David 
Copperfield crossed "foot-sore and weary" on 
his way to his aunt, and from which Pickwick 
contemplated the castle-ruin, the cathedral, the 
peaceful Medway. At the left of the mansion 
are the carriage-house and the school-room of 
Dickens's sons. In another portion of the 
grounds are his tennis-court and the bowling- 
green which he prepared, where he became a 
skilful and tireless player. The broad meadow 
beyond the lawn was a later purchase, and the 
many limes which beautify it were rooted by 
Dickens. Here numerous cricket matches were 
played, and he would watch the players or keep 
the score "the whole day long." It was in 
this meadow that he rehearsed his readings, and 
his talking, laughing, weeping, and gesticulating 
here " all to himself" excited among his neigh- 
bors suspicion of his insanity. From the front 
lawn a tunnel constructed by Dickens passes 
beneath the highway to " The Wilderness," a 
thickly wooded shrubbery, where magnificent 
cedars uprear their venerable forms and many 
sombre firs, survivors of the forest which erst 
covered the countryside, cluster upon the hill- 
top. Here Dickens's favorite dog, the " Linda" 
of his letters, lies buried. Amid the leafy se- 
clusion of this retreat, and upon the very spot 
54 



Dickens's Chalet 

where Falstaff was routed by Hal and Poins 
(" the eleven men in buckram"), Dickens 
erected the chalet sent to him in pieces by 
Fechter, the upper room of which — up among 
the quivering boughs, where " birds and butter- 
flies fly in and out, and green branches shoot in 
at the windows" — Dickens lined with mirrors 
and used as his study in summer. Of the work 
produced at Gad's Hill—" Two Cities," " Un- 
commercial Traveller," " Mutual Friend," " Ed- 
win Drood," and many tales and sketches of " All 
the Year Round" — much was written in this 
leaf-environed nook ; here the master wrought 
through the golden hours of his last day of con- 
scious life, here he wrote his last paragraph and 
at the close of that June day let fall his pen, 
never to take it up again. From the place of the 
chalet we behold the view which delighted the 
heart of Dickens, — his desk was so placed that 
his eyes would rest upon this view whenever he 
raised them from his work, — the fields of waving 
corn, the green expanse of meadows, the sail- 
dotted river. 

Many friends came to Dickens in this pleasant 
Kentish home, — Forster, Maclise, Reade, Ma- 
cready, Leech, Collins, Yates, Hans Christian 
Andersen, Mr. and Mrs. Fields, Longfellow and 
his daughters, Fechter and his wife: some of 
them were guests here for many days together. 
55 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

The master was the most genial of hosts, appar- 
ently the happiest of men, with the hearty 
laugh which Montaigne says never comes from 
a bad heart. After the morning task in library 
or chalet he gave the rest of the day to exercise 
and recreation, often at games with his guests 
in the grounds, but taking daily in rain or shine 
the long walks which made his lithe figure and 
rapid gait familiar to all the cottagers and field- 
laborers of the countryside. It is pleasant to 
hear the loving testimony of these simple folk 
— many of them descendants of the " men of 
Kent" who followed the standard of Wat Tyler 
from Blackheath to London — concerning Dick- 
ens's uniform kindness, his helpful generosity, 
his scrupulous regard of the rights of inferiors, 
the traits which won their hearts. One rustic 
neighbor declares, " Dickens was a main good 
man, sir : it was a sorry day for the neighborhood 
when he was taken away." Near the gate of 
Gad's Hill House is a wayside inn, the " Sir 
John Falstaff," which for more than two cen- 
turies has stood for remembrance of that worthy's 
exploit at this place. Its weather-worn sign 
bears portraits of Falstaff" and Prince Hal and a 
picture of the " Merry Wives of Windsor" put- 
ting Falstaff into the basket. The name of a 
son of the recent keeper of this hostelry, Ed- 
ward Trood, doubtless suggested the title of the 
56 



Scenes of Great Expectations 

" Mystery*' which must, alas ! remain a mystery 
evermore. 

From the inn a lane leads to a sightly summit 
surmounted by a monument which Dickens 
called " Andersen's Monument," because it was 
the resort of that illustrious author while a 
guest at Gad's Hill. Its far-reaching prospect 
is indeed alluring : on every hand vast, wave- 
like expanses of forest and orchard, moor and 
mead, sweep away to the horizon, while north- 
ward, beyond great cornfields and market-gardens, 
we see twenty miles of the Thames — " stealing 
steadily away to the ocean, like a man's life" 
— bordered here by a wilderness of low-lying 
marsh. A walk beloved of Dickens brings us 
to one of his favorite haunts, — a dreary church- 
yard on the margin of this marsh. It lies in 
the dismal, ague-haunted " hundred of Loo," a 
peninsula between the Thames and the Medway 
having a broad hem of desolate fens along the 
river-banks — a weird, little known region, whose 
ancient reputation was unsavory. A wooden 
finger on a post directs us to Cooling, — Dickens 
makes Pip say that this direction was never ac- 
cepted, no one ever came, — a forlorn hamlet 
which straggles about the ruins of Cooling Cas- 
tle. This was an ancient seat of the Cobhams ; 
through a Cobham heiress it passed to Oldcastle, 
leader of the Lollards, who shut himself up here 
57 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

and was dragged hence to martyrdom. It is 
noteworthy that this Oldcastle has been thought 
to be the original of Falstaff, the hero of Gad's 
Hill. Of the stronghold little remains save the 
machicolated gate-way, flanked with ponderous 
round towers bearing quaint inscriptions. The 
water of the moat is green and stagnant, sug- 
gesting frogs and rheumatism, and the space it 
encloses is occupied by the cottage of a farmer. 
The forge and cottage of Joe Gargery are not 
found in the wretched village, — indeed, we 
should be sorry to find that splendid fellow and 
the good Betty so poorly housed, — but beyond 
the narrow street and at the verge of the marshes 
we come to a low, quaint, square-towered old 
church, which rises from a wind-swept, nettle- 
grown church-yard, the scene of the opening 
chapter of " Great Expectations." Yonder 
mound, whose gravestone is inscribed to George 
Comfort, "Also Sarah, Wife of the Above," 
stands for the tomb of Pip's parents ; and sunken 
in the grass at our feet is the row of little grave- 
stones whose curious shape led Pip to believe 
that his little brothers (whose graves they 
marked) " had been born on their backs, with 
their hands in their trousers pockets, and had 
never taken them out in this stage of existence." 
Over this low wall which divides God's-acre 
from the marshes the convict climbed, and we, 
58 



The Marshes — Cobham 

standing upon it, look across the scene of his 
chase and capture, which Pip witnessed from 
Joe's back. On this sombre autumn afternoon 
of our visit the landscape is startlingly like that 
the terrified boy beheld : we see the same far- 
stretching waste of marshes, the intersecting 
dikes, the low, leaden line of the river beyond, 
dark mists hanging heavy over all, while the 
chill wind blows in our faces from its '« savage 
lair" in the sea. Upon yonder flat tombstone 
in the far corner of the church-yard Dickens sat 
and lunched with Fields when he last walked to 
this place. Hidden now in the mists, but not 
far distant, and reached by a foot-path from the 
road to Chalk, is a dirty and dilapidated Thames- 
side inn, whose creaking sign-board reads, " Ship 
and Lobster :" this is The Ship of " Great Ex- 
pectations," where Pip and his party slept the 
night preceding their attempt to put Magwich 
on the steamer, and the open river below the 
little causeway is the scene of their mischance 
and the transport's recapture. 

The walk which Dickens most enjoyed — the 
one which was his last before he died — was to 
and around Cobham, the seat of his friend 
Darnley. We follow the way once so familiar 
to his feet, through the noble park which the 
Pickwick Club found " so thoroughly delightful," 
on a June afternoon, by the stately old hall 
59 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

where lately stood Dickens's chalet, and farther, 
through majestic forest and open glade, to the 
place whence Pickwick — overcome by cold 
punch — was wheeled to the pound. Skirting 
the park on our return, we come to Cobham 
village and the neat Leather Bottle Inn to which 
the lovelorn Tupman retired to conceal his woe 
after his discomfiture at Manor Farm, and where 
Dickens himself, rambling in the neighborhood 
with Forster, lodged in 1841. Here is the 
little church-yard where Pickwick walked with 
Tupman and persuaded him to return to the 
world, and hard by the cottage of Bill Stumps, 
before which Pickwick made the immortal dis- 
covery which was ** the pride of his friends and 
the envy of every antiquarian in this or any 
other country." Another favorite walk of 
Dickens conducts us, past a quaint, rambling 
mansion of dingy brick which served as the 
model for Satis House of " Great Expectations," 
to Rochester, the Cloisterham of " Edwin 
Drood." Here we find the Bull Inn, — " good 
house, nice beds," — where the Pickwick Club 
lodged, in rooms 13 and 19, and the ballroom, 
where Tupman and Jingle (the latter in Winkle's 
coat) danced with the widow and enraged little 
Slammer ; the Watt's Charity of " The Uncom- 
mercial Traveller;" the picturesque castle-ruin 
which Dickens frequented and has so charmingly 
60 



Cloisterham — Land of Dickens 

described. Here, too, is the gray old cathedral 
he loved, which appears in many of his tales, 
from Jingle's piquant account of it in " Pickwick" 
to that touching description of this ancient fane 
in the last lines of the master, written within 
sound of its bells and but a few hours before 
his death. 

This region of sunny Kent, the scene of his 
earliest and latest years, may fitly be called The 
Land of Dickens, so intimately is it associated 
with his life and work. Here at near-by Chat- 
ham (whence he used to come to gaze longingly 
at Gad's Hill House), in a whitewashed cottage 
on Ordnance Place, he lived as a child ; at 
yonder village of Chalk he spent his honey- 
moon, its expenses being defrayed by the sale 
of the first numbers of " Pickwick ;" here were 
the habitual resorts of his holiday leisure ; here 
was his latest home ; here he died, and here he 
desired to be buried. This district was no less 
the life-haunt and home of his imagination and 
genius. The scenes of his most effective ro- 
mances are laid here ; into the fabric of many 
a tale and sketch his fancy has woven the fa- 
miliar features of town and hamlet, field and 
forest, marsh and river, of the region he knew 
and loved so well ; here his first tale opens, 
here his last tale ends. 



61 



SOME HAUNTS OF BYRON 

Birthplace — London Homes - Murray* s Book-Store — Kensal 
Green — Harrow — Byron's Tomb — His Diadem Hill — 
Abode of his Star of Annesley — Portraits — Mementos. 

/^\F the places in and about great London 
^^ which were associated with the brief life 
of Byron, the rage for improvement which holds 
nothing sacred has spared a few, and the quest 
for Byron-haunts is still fairly rewarded. Holies 
Street, where he was born, has not long been re- 
signed to trade : we have known it as a somno- 
lent little street whose grateful quiet — reached 
by a step from the tumult of De Quincey's 
" stony-hearted step-mother" — made it seem 
like a placid pool beside a riotous torrent. It is 
scarce a furlong in length, and from the shade of 
Cavendish Square at its extremity we could look, 
between bordering rows of modest dwellings, to 
the square where Ralph Nickleby lived and 
Mary Wortley Montagu died. At our right, a 
little way down the street, stood a small, plain, 
two-storied house of dingy brick, where the 
poet's mother lodged in the upper front room at 
the time of his birth. This dwelling was No. 
1 6, later 24, and has now given place to a shop. 
An unpretentious tenement near Sloane Square 
was Byron's home during his pupilage with Dr. 
Glennie. 

62 



London Homes 

In the house No. 8 St. James Street, nearly 
opposite the place where Gibbon died, Byron 
had for some years a suite of rooms. Here he 
was convenient to Almack's aristocratic ball- 
rooms and St. James Theatre, and was in the then, 
as it is now, centre of fashionable club-life. 
His residence here began when he came to Lon- 
don to publish " Bards and Reviewers," was 
resumed upon his return from the Levantine tour, 
and continued during the publication of the early 
cantos of " Childe Harold" and other poems 
written on that tour. In these rooms " Cor- 
sair," " The Giaour," and " Bride of Abydos" 
were written, the latter in a single night and 
with one quill. The last year of Byron's resi- 
dence here was the period of his highest popu- 
larity, when he was the especial pet of London 
society queens, one of whom — who later wrote 
a book to defame him — was recognized in bifur- 
cated masculine garb in these chambers. On the 
same street is the home of White's Club, the 
Bays' of " Pendennis," of which the present 
Lord Byron is a member, and on the site of the 
Carlton Club, Pall Mall, stood the Star and 
Garter tavern, where, in room No. 7 at the 
right on the first floor, the poet's predecessor 
killed his neighbor Chaworth, grand-uncle of 
Byron's -* star of Annesley." Adjoining the 
Academy of Arts in Piccadilly is that " college 
63 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

of bachelors," the Albany apartment house where 
Dickens lodged " Fascination'* Fledgeby and laid 
the scene of his flagellation by Lammle and the 
dressing of his wounds with pepper by Jenny 
Wren. Here the handsome suite A 2 was the 
abode of Byron for the year or so preceding his 
hapless marriage, and here " Lara" and ■* Hebrew 
Melodies" were written. The poet had passed 
the zenith of the social horizon, and the " Byron- 
madness" was waning, when he came to the 
Albany ; still, the visits of fair admirers were 
vouchsafed him in these rooms. It was here 
that the girl whose story Guiccioli adduces as 
evidence of Byron's virtuous self-denial came to 
him for counsel. If the partiality of his mis- 
tress has unduly praised his conduct at this time, 
it is a thousandfold outweighed by the bitter- 
ness of another narrative — happily discredited, 
if not disproven — which indicates this same 
period as being that of the beginning of a liaison 
with his sister. To these rooms Moore was a 
daily visitant, and Canning then lodged on the 
second floor adjoining the suite E 1, where 
Macaulay wrote the " History of England"" and 
many essays. Byron's last abode in London was 
a stately house in Piccadilly, opposite Green 
Park and not far from the then London sojourn 
of Scott. Byron's dwelling, now No. 139, 
belonged to the Duchess of Devon, and was 
64 



London Homes 

known as 13 Piccadilly Terrace. To this 
elegant home he brought his bride after the 
" treacle-moon," and here passed the remainder 
of their brief period of cohabitation. Here 
'* The Siege of Corinth," w Parisina," and many- 
minor poems were penned, the MS. of some 
being in the handwriting of his wife. Here 
Augusta Leigh was a guest warmly welcomed 
by Lady Byron, despite her alleged knowledge 
of the "shocking misconduct" of Byron and 
his sister in this house. Here Ada, "sole 
daughter of his house and heart," was born, and 
from here, a few weeks later, his wife went 
forth, never to see him again. Some letters came 
from her to this home, — playful notes to Byron 
inviting him to follow her, affectionate epistles 
to the sister, then a final letter announcing her de- 
termination never to return. In the ten months 
during which Byron occupied this house it was 
nine times in possession of bailiffs on account 
of his debts. It has since been refaced and re- 
paired, but the original rooms remain. Hamilton 
Place now leads from it to Hamilton Gardens, 
where stands a beautiful statue of Byron. To 
the mansion of Sir Edward Knatchbull, No. 25 
Great George Street, a site now occupied by the 
Institute of Engineers, the corpse of Byron was 
brought upon its arrival from Greece ; and here 
in the great parlors, but a few steps from the 
b 65 




A Literary Pilgrimage 

spot where the remains of Sheridan had lain 
eight years before, Byron's body lay in state 
while his friends vainly sought sepulture for it in 
Westminster. 

At No. 50 Albemarle Street, Piccadilly, not 
far from the Albany, is the establishment of John 
Murray, whose predecessor, John Murray II., 
published " Childe Harold" and all Byron's 
subsequent poems to the earlier cantos of " Don 
Juan." At this house the poet was a frequent 
and familiar lounger. Here, in a cosy drawing- 
room which is handsomely furnished and em- 
bellished, Murray used to hold a literary court, 
and here Byron first shook hands with the 
" great Wizard of the North" and met Moore, 
Canning, Southey, Gifford, and other litterateurs. 
Scott afterward wrote, " Byron and I met for 
an hour or two daily in Murray's drawing-room, 
and found much to say to each other." During 
his residence in London, Byron was customarily 
one of the coterie of authors — facetiously called 
the *' four o'clock club" — which daily assembled 
in this room. The seances were frequented at 
one time or another by most of the stars of 
English letters, embracing, besides those above 
named, Campbell, Hallam, Crabbe, Lockhart, 
Disraeli, Irving, George Ticknor, etc. We 
find the room little changed since their time. 
Original portraits of that brilliant company look 
66 



Murray's 

down from the walls of the room they haunted 
in life, and the visitor thrills with the thought 
that in some subtile sense their presence per- 
vades it still. In this room Ada Byron, kept in 
ignorance of her father until womanhood, first 
saw his handwriting, and in yonder fireplace 
beneath his portrait, four days after intelligence 
of his death had reached London, the manu- 
script of his much-discussed " Memoirs" was 
burned at the desire of Lady Byron and in the 
presence of Moore and Byron's executor, Hob- 
house, who had witnessed his hapless marriage. 
Until the death of Byron his relations with 
Murray were most cordial, and the present John 
Murray IV., grandson of Byron's publisher, 
possesses numerous letters of the poet, some of 
which were used in Moore's " Life." Per- 
haps most interesting of Byron's many rhyming 
epistles is the one commencing, — 

" My dear Mr. Murray, 
You're in a blanked hurry 
To set up this ultimate canto," 

which announces the final completion of" Childe 
Harold." Among many mementos of Byron 
cherished in this famous room are the original 
MSS. of " Bards and Reviewers" and of most 
of his later poems. With them are other 
priceless MSS. of Scott, Swift, Gray, Southey, 
67 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

Livingstone, Irving, Motley, etc. The Murray- 
Ill, who used to show us these treasures with 
reverent pride, and who could boast that he 
had known Byron, Scott, and Goethe, died not 
long ago. When we ask for the Bible popularly 
believed to have been given to Murray by Byron 
with a line so altered as to read " now Barabbas 
was a publisher" we are told this joke was 
Campbell's and was upon another publisher than 
Murray. Byron's signet-ring has passed to the 
possession of Pierre Barlow, Esq., of New York. 
Litterateurs still come to " Murray's den," 
though not so often as in the time when clubs 
were less popular : among those who may some- 
times be met here are Argyll, Knight, Layard, 
Dufferin, Temple, Francis Darwin, etc. Mur- 
rays' was the home of the Review — " whose 
mission in life is to hang, draw, and Quarter/y," 
as one victim avers — to which came Charlotte 
Bronte's burly Irish uncle with his shillelah in 
search of the harsh reviewer of "Jane Eyre," 
and haunted the place until he was turned away. 
A most delightful outing is the jaunt from 
Byron's London haunts, past Kensal Green, 
where we find the precious graves in which 
sleep Thackeray, Motley, Cunningham, Jame- 
son, Hood, Hunt, Sydney Smith, and Mrs. 
Hawthorne, — the latter beneath ivy from her 
Wayside home and periwinkle from her hus- 
68 



Kensal Green — Harrow 

band's tomb on the piny hill-top at Concord, — 
to Harrow, the " Ida" of Byron's verse. Here 
is the ancient school of which Sheridan, Peel, 
Perceval, Trollope,.and others famous in letters 
or politics were inmates ; where Byron was for 
years "a troublesome and mischievous pupil" 
and made the acquaintance of Clare, Dorset, 
and others to whom some of his poems are 
addressed, and of Wildman who rescued his 
Newstead from ruin : the present Byron and 
the son of Ada Byron were also Harrow boys. 
Here may be seen some of the poet's worn and 
scribbled books ; his name graven by him upon 
a panel of the oldest building ; the Peachie 
tombstone — protected now by iron bars — which 
was his evening resort, where some of his 
stanzas were composed, and whence he beheld 
a landscape of enchanting beauty. Near this 
beloved spot, where Byron once desired to be 
entombed, sleeps a sinless child of sin, his 
daughter Allegra, born of Mrs. Shelley's sister. 
At Harrow, Byron repaid help upon his exer- 
cises by fighting for his assistant ; his successes 
here were mainly pugilistic, but his battles were 
often those of younger and weaker boys, and 
the spot where he fought the tyrants of the 
school is pointed out with interest and pride. 

In Notts, en route to Newstead, we lodge in 
an old mansion alleged to have been the abode 
69 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

of the poet in his school-vacations; we have 
the high authority of the landlord for the con- 
viction that we occupy the room and the very 
bed oft used by Byron ; but the credulity even 
of a pilgrim has a limit, and the agility of the 
fleas that now inhabit the bed forbids belief 
that they too are relics of the poet. Better 
authenticated are the Byron relics of a local 
society, among which are the boot-trees certified 
by his bootmaker to be those upon which the 
poet's boots were fitted. They are of interest 
as demonstrating that the asymmetry of his feet 
was much less than has been believed ; one foot 
was shorter than its fellow, and the ankle was 
weak, but not deformed. 

From Nottingham a winsome way along a 
smiling vale, with billowy hills swelling upon 
either hand, conducts us to the village of Huck- 
nall. By its market-place an ancient church- 
tower rises from a grave-strewn enclosure ; we 
enter the fane through a porch of ponderous 
timbers, and, traversing the dim aisle, approach 
the chancel and find there the tomb of Childe 
Harold. A slab of blue marble, sent by the 
King of Greece and bearing the word Byron, 
is set in the pavement to mark the spot where, 
after the throes of his passion-tossed life, Byron 
lies among his kindred in " the dreamless sleep 
that lulls the dead." One who, as a lad, en- 
70 



Tomb of Childe Harold 

tered the vault at the burial of Ada Byron, in- 
dicates for us its size upon the pavement and the 
position of the coffins ; Byron, in a coffin cov- 
ered with velvet and resting upon benches of 
stone, lies between his mother and the " sole 
daughter of his house and heart ;" at his feet a 
receptacle contains his heart and brain. His 
valet and the Little White Lady of Irving's 
narrative sleep in the yard near by. A marble 
tablet on the church wall describes Byron as the 
" Author of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage ;" this 
was erected by his sister, and near it we saw a 
chaplet of faded laurel placed years ago by our 
"Bard of the Sierras." Byron's tomb has 
never been a popular shrine, but such Americans 
as Irving, Hawthorne, Halleck, Ludlow, Jo- 
aquin Miller, and William Winter have been 
reverent pligrims. Once Byron's " Italian en- 
chantress," la Guiccioli, was found weeping 
here and kissing the pavement which covers the 
lover of her youth. 

Above Hucknall the ancestral domain of the 
Byrons lies upon the right, while upon the other 
hand extend the broad lands which were the 
heritage of Mary Ann Chaworth, Byron's " star 
of Annesley." From the boundary of the es- 
tates, where the poet sometimes met his youth- 
ful love, a stroll across a landscape parquetted 
with grain-field gold and meadow emerald brings 
71 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

us to the ancient seat of the time-honored race 
of which the maiden of Byron's " Dream" — 
the " Mary" of many poems — was the " last 
solitary scion left." It is now the property of 
her great-grandson. Most of her married life 
was passed elsewhere, and Annesley fell into 
the neglected condition which Irving describes. 
Mary's husband, the maligned Musters, instead 
of hating the place and seeking to destroy its 
identity, preferred it to his other property, and 
spent many years after his wife's death in re- 
storing and beautifying it, taking pains to pre- 
serve the grounds and the main portion of the 
mansion in the condition in which his wife had 
known them in her maidenhood. This became 
the beloved home of his later years, and here he 
died. This mansion of the '* Dream" stands 
upon an elevation overlooking many acres of 
picturesque park. It is a great, rambling pile 
of motley architecture, obviously erected by 
different generations of Chaworths to suit their 
varying needs and tastes, but the walls are over- 
grown with clambering vines, which conceal 
the touch of time and impart to the structure 
an aspect of harmonious beauty. The prin- 
cipal facade which presents along the court is 
imposing and stately, but on every side are 
pointed gables, stone balustrades, and pictu- 
resque walls. The interior arrangement of 
72 



Annesley Hall 

the body of the house remains precisely as 
Mary knew it, even the decorations of some 
of the rooms having been preserved by the 
considerate love of her husband and descendants ; 
and here, despite the averment of a Byron- 
biographer that " every relic of her ancient 
family was sold and scattered to the winds," the 
Chaworth plate, portraits, and other belongings 
are religiously cherished. We were first in- 
vited to the place to see these while they were 
yet displayed by the maid in whose arms Mary 
died. Upon the walls of the great lower hall 
are many family pictures, among them that of 
the Chaworth whom Byron's great-uncle had 
slain. It was this portrait that Byron feared 
would come out of its frame to haunt him if he 
remained here over-night. From the hall low 
stairs lead to the apartments. At the right is 
Mary's sitting-room, where Byron spent many 
hours beside her, listening entranced while she 
played to him upon the piano which stood in the 
farther corner. It is a pleasant apartment, its 
windows looking out upon the garden-beds 
Mary tended, which we see now ablaze with 
the flowers known to have been her favorites. 
In this room, which " her smiles had made a 
heaven to him," Byron, years afterward, saw 
Mary for the last time and kissed for its mother's 
sake " the child that ought to have been his." 
73 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

On this occasion she made the inquiry which 
prompted the lines, " To Mrs. Musters, on 
being asked my reason for quitting England in 
the spring." This last painful interview is re- 
called in the poems '« Well, Thou art Happy" 
and "I've seen my Bride Another's Bride." 
Above the hall is the large drawing-room, where 
we see several portraits of Mary, which represent 
her as a most beautiful woman, with a pa- 
thetically sweet and winning face, — by no means 
the " wicked-looking cat" which Byron's jealous 
wife described. Here, too, are pictures of her 
husband which fully justify his popular sobriquet, 
"handsome Jack Musters." Physically they 
were an admirably matched pair. Out of the 
drawing-room is the " antique oratory" of 
the poem, a small apartment above the en- 
trance-porch, pictured as the scene of Byron's 
parting with Mary after her announcement 
of her betrothal. Byron was cordially wel- 
comed at Annesley ; the family were his rela- 
tives, and all of them, save that young lady 
herself, would gladly have had him marry the 
heiress. Among the guest-chambers is one, 
called of yore the blue room, which during one 
summer — after his fear of the family portraits 
had been subdued by the greater fear of meet- 
ing " bogles" on his homeward way — Byron 
often occupied. Here he incensed Nanny the 
74 



Annesley Park — Diadem Hill 

housekeeper by allowing his dog to sleep upon 
the bed and soil her neat counterpanes. An- 
other servant, " old Joe," tired of sitting up at 
night to wait upon him, finally frightened him 
away by means of some hideous nocturnal 
noises, which he assured the young poet pro- 
ceeded from "spooks out of the kirk-yard," 
— Byron's superstition doubtless suggesting the 
ruse. 

Giant trees overtop the chimneys and bower 
the walls of the venerable mansion. The gar- 
den which Irving found matted and wild was 
long ago restored by Musters to its former 
beauty of turf, foliage, and flower. A grand 
terrace, — one of the finest in England, — with 
brick walls and carved balustrades of stone man- 
tled and draped with ivy, lies at the right, with 
broad steps leading down to the garden where 
Byron delighted to linger with Mary during the 
swift hours of one too brief summer. Beneath 
the terrace is a door, carefully protected by 
Musters and his descendants, which Byron daily 
used as a target and in which we see the marks of 
bullets from his pistol. The grounds are ex- 
tensive and beautifully diversified by copses of 
great trees and grassy glades where deer feed 
amid myriad witcheries of leaf and bloom. 
Half a mile from the Hall is a shrine that 
will attract the sentimental prowler, Byron's 
75 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

diadem hill. Projecting from the extremity of a 
long line of eminences, it is a landmark to the 
countryside and overlooks the living landscape 
which the poet depicted in lines throbbing with 
life and beauty. From its acclivity we see much 
of his ancestral Newstead, the adjoining fair 
acres of Annesley which he would have added 
to his own, the tower and chimneys of the 
Hall rising among clustering oaks : beyond these 
darkly wooded hills decline to the valley, along 
which we look — past parks, villages, and the 
church where Byron sleeps — to the spires of 
the city. As we contemplate the vista from 
the spot where stood the two bright " beings in 
the hues of youth," we have about us a ring of 
dark firs, the " diadem of trees in circular array" 
pictured in the " Dream," apparently unchanged 
since the day the maiden and the youth here 
met for the last time before her marriage. The 
Byron-writers have united in denouncing Mus- 
ters for denuding this hill-top in a splenetic 
endeavor to prevent its identification as the 
scene of the interview described in the poem. 
In truth, we owe the preservation of the features 
which identify this romantic spot to the very 
hand which the author of " Crayon Miscellany" 
avers is " execrated by every poetic pilgrim." 
When natural causes were rapidly destroying 
the grove, Musters caused its removal and re- 
76 



Byron-Chaworth-Musters 

placed it by saplings grown from cones of the 
old trees, each fir of the present beautiful diadem 
being sedulously rooted upon the site of its 
lineal ancestor. Musters had much greater rea- 
son to regard this spot with romantic tenderness 
than had the poet ; here he enjoyed many stolen 
interviews with his sweetheart, for he was for- 
bidden to see her in her home, and she, per- 
verse and persistent in her passion for him, 
came here daily with the hope of meeting him 
and watched for his approach along the valley. 
Upon the very occasion the poem describes, 
she waited here, " Looking afar if yet her lover's 
steed kept pace with her expectancy,*' and 
merely tolerated the company of the "gaby" 
boy Byron until Musters might arrive. The 
latter had no reason for the irritable jealousy 
toward Byron which has been attributed to 
him, and there is no evidence that he evinced 
or entertained such a feeling. He freely invited 
the poet to his house, rode and swam with him, 
preserved the few Byron mementos at Annesley, 
and protected the tombs of Byron's ancestors at 
Colwick. So much of untruth has been pub- 
lished anent the Byron-Chaworth-Musters mat- 
ter, and especially concerning the attitude of 
the lady toward Byron and the conditions of 
her subsequent life, that it is pleasant, even at 
this late day, to be able to record upon un- 
77 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

doubted evidence that her loving admiration for 
her husband ceased only with her life. 

On the bank of the silvery Trent, three 
miles from Nottingham, is Colwick Hall, where 
Mary's married life was spent. This was an 
ancient seat of the Byrons, said to have been 
lost by them at the card-table. Mary's home 
was an imposing mansion, with lofty cupola, 
balustraded roofs, and stately pediments upheld 
by Ionic columns. From the front windows 
we look across a wide expanse of sun-kissed 
meadow beyond the river, while at the back 
rocky cliffs rise steeply and are tufted by over- 
hanging woods. The Hall was attacked and 
pillaged in 1831 by a Luddite mob, from whom 
poor Mary escaped half naked into the shrub- 
bery and lay concealed in the cold wet night. 
The exposure and terror of this event impaired 
her reason, and caused her death the next year 
at Wiverton, another seat of the Chaworths, 
where her descendants reside. Close by the 
mansion at Colwick, now a summer resort, was 
the old gray church, with battlemented tower, 
where Mary was married, and where she lies in 
death with her husband and his kindred, near 
the burial-vault of the ancestors of the lame 
boy who linked her name to deathless verse. 
At the side of the altar a beautiful monumental 
tablet, bearing a graceful female figure and a 
78 



Mary's Grave 

laudatory inscription, is placed in memory of 
the " star of Annesley," whose brightness went 
out in distraction and gloom. 

To Byron's early passion and its failure we 
owe some of the sweetest and tenderest of his 
songs ; and it has been believed that the memory 
of that defeat adapted his thoughts to their 
highest flights and gave added pathos and beauty 
to his noblest work. Thus all the world were 
gainers by his disappointment, and evidence is 
lacking that either the lady or the lover was a 
loser. 



79 



THE HOME OF CHILDE 
HAROLD 



Ntivittad-Byrori s Apartments-Relics and Reminders-Ghosts- 
Ruins— The Young Oak — Dog's Tomb -Devil's Wood- 
Irving-Livingstone-Stanley- Joaquin Miller. 

I1TOWEVER alluring other haunts of Byron 
may be found, the " hall of his fathers" 
must remain paramount in the interest and affec- 
tion of his admirers. The stanzas he addressed 
to that venerable pile, the graphic description 
in" Don Juan," the plaintive allusions in " Childe 
Harold," its own romantic history as a mediaeval 
fortress and shrine, and its association with the 
bard who inherited its lands and dwelt beneath 
its battlements, render Newstead Abbey a Mecca 
to which the steps of pilgrims tend. It came 
to the Byrons by royal gift, and in the middle of 
the last century was inherited by the poet's pre- 
decessor the Wicked Byron, who killed his 
neighbor of Annesley and so desolated the Abbey 
that the only spot sheltered from the storms was 
a corner of the scullery where he breathed out 
his wretched life. The poet occupied the place 
at intervals for twenty years, and then sold it to 
Colonel Wildman, who had been his form-fellow 
at Harrow, and to whom we are mainly indebted 
for the restoration of the edifice and the preserva- 
80 



The Abbey — Chapel Ruin 

tion of every memento of the poet and his race. 
At the death of Wildman the Abbey became the 
property of Colonel W. F. Webb, a sharer in 
Livingstone's explorations, who gathers here a 
brilliant circle of authors, artists, travellers, and 
wits whose gayety dispels the hoary and ghostly 
associations of the place. 

From the boundary of the estate a broad 
avenue, lined with noble trees, leads to an inner 
park of eight hundred acres, among whose sylvan 
beauties our way lies, through verdant glades and 
under leafy boughs whose shadows the sunshine 
prints upon the path, until we see, from the 
verge of the wood, the noble pile rising amid an 
environment of lawn and lake, grove and garden. 
It is a vast stone structure, composed of motley 
parts joined " by no quite lawful marriage of the 
arts" into an harmonious and impressive whole. 
The western facade is the one usually pictured, 
because it contains the Byron apartments and best 
displays the characteristic features of the edifice, 
having a castellated tower at one extremity, 
while to the other is joined the ruined chapel 
front which, as an example of its style, is 
rivalled in architectural value only by St. Mary's 
at York. This Newstead fragment, retaining 
its perfect proportions, its noble windows, its 
gray statue of the Virgin and " God-born Child" 
in the high niche of the gable, — the whole 
p 81 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

draped and garlanded with ivy which conceals 
the scars of Cromwell's cannon-balls, — is a vision 
of unique beauty. From the Gothic door-way 
of the mansion we are admitted to a gallery 
with a low-vaulted roof of stone upheld by 
massive columns. This was the crypt of the 
abbot's dormitory ; it adjoins the cloisters, and, 
like them, was used by the Wicked Byron as a 
stable for cattle. It is now adorned with the 
spoils of African deserts, trophies of the mighty 
huntsman who now inhabits the Abbey. One 
of these, the skin of a noble lion, is said to 
have belonged to a beast which had mutilated 
Livingstone and was standing above his body 
when a ball from Webb's rifle laid him low and 
saved the great explorer. From the crypt, stone 
stairs lead to the corridors above the cloisters : 
in Byron's time entrance was between a bear 
and a wolf chained on these stairs and menacing 
the guest from either side. Out of the corridor 
adjoining the chapel ruin a spiral stairway ascends 
to a plain and sombre suite of rooms, once the 
abbot's lodgings, but cherished now because 
they were the private apartments of Byron. 
His chamber is neither large nor elegant, its walls 
are plainly papered, and its single oriel window 
is shaded by a faded curtain. The room remains 
as Byron last occupied it : his carpet is upon the 
floor; the carved bedstead, with its gilt posts 
82 



Byron's Apartments 

and lordly coronets, is the one brought by him 
from college; its curtains and coverings are 
those he used ; above the mantel is the mir- 
ror which often reflected his handsome features. 
We sit in his embroidered arm-chair by the 
window, overlooking lawn and lake and the 
wood he planted, and write out upon his plain 
table the memoranda from which this article is 
prepared. The tourist is told that the chamber 
has never been used since Byron left it; but 
Irving occupied it for some time, as his letters to 
his brother declare, and a few years ago our 
Joaquin Miller lay here in Byron's bed, and saw, 
in the moonbeams sharply reflected from the 
mirror into his face, an explanation of the 
ghostly apparitions which Byron beheld in this 
glass. In the adjoining room are a portrait of 
the poet's " corporeal pastor," Jackson, in arena 
costume, and a painting of Byron's valet, Joe 
Murray, a bright-looking fellow of pleasing face 
and faultless attire. This room was sometime 
occupied by Byron's pretty page, whom the 
housekeeper believed to be a girl in masquerade : 
this page was introduced elsewhere as the poet's 
younger brother Gordon, and an attempt has 
been made to identify her with the mysterious 
'* Thyrza" of his poems, and with " Astarte" 
also. The third room of the suite, Byron's 
dressing-room and study, was one of the haunts 
83 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

of the goblin friar who was heard stalking amid 
the dim cloisters or in the apartments above. 
Byron's room here is the Gothic chamber of 
the Norman abbey where " Don Juan" slept 
and dreamed of Aurora Raby, and the corridor 
is the " gallery of sombre hue" where he pur- 
sued the sable phantom and captured a very 
material duchess. Directly beneath is a pan- 
elled apartment of moderate dimensions which 
was Byron's dining-room and the scene of many 
a revel when the monk's skull, brimming with 
wine, was sent round by the poet's guests. His 
sideboard is still here, his heavy table remains 
in the middle of the room, and the famous skull, 
mounted as a drinking-cup and inscribed with 
the familiar anacreontic, is carefully preserved. 
The library is a stately and spacious apartment : 
here, among many mementos of the poet, Ada 
Byron first heard a poem of her father's ; here 
Byron's Italian friend la Guiccioli made notes 
for her " Recollections," and here Livingstone 
penned portions of the books which record his 
explorations. In the grand hall we see the 
elevated chimney-piece beneath which Byron 
and his guests heaped so great a fire, on the first 
night of his occupancy of the Abbey, that its 
destruction was threatened. This superb apart- 
ment, the old dormitory of the monks, was 
used by the poet as a shooting-gallery, and was 
84 



Relics 

one of the haunts of his •« Black Friar." The 
drawing-room of the mansion is palatial in 
dimensions and furnishing. Its panels and gro- 
tesque carvings have been restored, and this an- 
cient room, once the refectory of the monks and 
later the hay-loft of the Wicked Byron, is now 
a marvel of elegance. Here is the familiar por- 
trait of Byron at twenty-three, an earlier water- 
color picturing him in college gown, and a later 
bust in marble. Here by her desire the body 
of Ada Byron lay in state, and from here it was 
borne to rest beside her father at near-by Huck- 
nall, more than realizing the closing stanzas of 
the third canto of " Childe Harold." 

In these stately rooms and in the adjoining 
corridors are numerous priceless relics of the 
immortal bard ; among them, the cap, belt, and 
cimeter he wore in Greece; his foils, spurs, 
stirrups, and boxing-gloves; a painting of his 
famous dog Boatswain ; the bronze candlesticks 
from his writing-table and the table upon which 
were written " Bards and Reviewers," poems 
of " Hours of Idleness," " Hebrew Melodies," 
and portions of his masterpiece, " Childe Har- 
old." Preserved here, with Byron's will, un- 
published letters, and scraps of verse, are papers 
which indicate that the poet's chef-d* ceuvre was 
originally designed for private circulation and 
was entitled " Childe Byron." An interesting 
85 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

relic is a section of the noted " twin-tree" 
bearing the names " Byron — Augusta" carved by 
the poet at his last visit to the Abbey. Our 
own Barnum once visited the place and offered 
Wildman five hundred pounds for this double 
tree (then standing in the grove), intending to re- 
move it for exhibition ; the colonel indignantly 
replied that five thousand would not purchase it, 
and that " the man capable of such a project de- 
served to be gibbeted." Here, too, are the por- 
trait of the first lord of Newstead, "John 
Byron - the - Little - with- the - Great - Beard ;" the 
huge iron knocker in use on the door of the 
Abbey seven centuries ago ; a collection of 
mediaeval armor and weapons ; some personal 
belongings of Livingstone, and many specimens 
of fauna and flora gathered by him and Webb 
in the dark continent. One vaulted apartment 
of exquisite proportions, erst the sanctuary of 
the abbot, and later Byron's dog-kennel, is now 
the chapel of the household. Newstead has 
been the abode of royalty, and holds rooms in 
which, from the time of Edward III., kings have 
often lodged. We see the chamber occupied by 
Ada Byron during her visit ; another, adorned 
with quaint carvings and once haunted by Byron- 
of-the-Great-Beard, was used by Irving. The 
noble chambers contain richly carved furniture, 
costly tapestries, and beds of such altitude that 
86 



Court and Gardens 

steps are provided for scaling them. The hang- 
ings of one bed belonged to Prince Rupert, and 
its counterpane was embroidered by Mary Queen 
of Scots. 

In the centre of the edifice is the quadrangular 
court, surrounded by a series of low-vaulted 
arcades, once the stables of the Wicked Byron 
and long ago the " cloisters dim and damp" of 
the monks whose dust moulders now beneath 
the pavement. One crypt-like cell which holds 
the boilers for heating the mansion was Byron's 
swimming-bath. In the middle of the court 
the ancient stone fountain, with its grotesque 
sculptures of saints and monsters, graven by the 
patient toil of the monks, still sends out sprays 
of coolness. 

We spend delightful hours loitering in the 
ancient gardens of the friars and about their 
ruined chapel. Through its mighty window, 
" yawning all desolate," pours a flood of western 
light upon the turf that covers the holy ground 
where congregations knelt in worship ; while, 
amid the dust of the priests and near the 
site of the altar where they " raised their pious 
voices but to pray," Byron's dog lies in a tomb 
far handsomer than that which holds his noble 
master. It was in excavating Boatswain's grave 
that Byron found the skull afterward used as a 
drinking-cup. The dog's monument consists of 
87 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

a wide pedestal, surmounted by a panelled altar- 
stone which upholds a funeral urn and bears 
Byron's familiar eulogistic inscription and the 
misanthropic stanzas ending with the lines, — 

" To mark a friend's remains these stones arise j 
I never knew but one, and here he lies.** 

Other panels were designed to bear the epitaph 
of Byron, who directed in his will (1811) that 
he should be buried in this spot with his valet 
and dog ; it is said to have been discovered that 
the poet had made careful preparation for his 
entombment here, the stone trestles and slab to 
support his coffin being in place upon the pave- 
ment, but the sale of Newstead led to his in- 
terment elsewhere, and faithful Murray — who 
declined to lie here " alone with the dog" — 
sleeps near his master. 

The gardens of the Abbey lie about its 
ancient walls : here are the fish-pools of the 
monks ; the noble terrace ; the " Young Oak" 
of Byron's poem, planted by his hands and now 
grown into a large and graceful tree ; other trees 
rooted by Livingstone and Stanley while guests 
here. At one side is a grove of beeches and 
yews, in whose gloomy recesses theWicked Byron 
erected leaden statues of Pan and Pandora, of 
which the rustics were so afraid that they would 
not go near them after nightfall, and which are 
88 



Grounds — Recollections 

still respectfully spoken of in the servants' hall 
as " Mr. and Mrs. Devil. " Before the mansion 
lies the lucid lake described in " Don Juan :" 
the forest that shades its shore and sweeps over 
the farther hill-side was planted by Byron to 
repair the spoliation of his uncle, and is called 
the " Poet's Wood." Upon some of the farms 
of the domain live descendants of Nancy Smith, 
whom Irving's readers will remember, her son 
having married despite his mother's protest and 
reared a family. One aged servitor claims to 
remember Irving's visit, and opines "the old 
colonel [Wildman] thought him a very fine 
man — for an American." He recounts some 
peccadilloes of Joe Murray, traditional among 
the servants, which show that worthy to have 
been less precise in morals than in dress. The 
ancient Byron estates were among the haunts of 
one whose exploits inspired a book of ballads, 
and we here see Robin Hood's cave and other 
reminders of the bold outlaw and his " merrie 
men in Lyncolne greene." 

Such, briefly, is the condition of Byron's an- 
cestral home as it appears nearly eighty years 
after he saw it for the last time. Besides the 
charms which won his affection and made him 
relinquish the Abbey with such poignant regret, 
it holds for us an added spell in that it has been 
the habitation of a transcendent genius. Where 
89 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

Wildman's fortune failed his wishes the present 
owner has supplemented his work, until the vast 
pile now gleams with more than its ancient 
splendor ; and, as we take a last view through a 
glade whose beauty fitly frames the picture of 
the restored mansion, we trust that somehow 
and somewhere Byron knows that his hope for 
his beloved Newstead is accomplished : 

" Haply thy sun emerging yet may shine, 
Thee to irradiate with meridian ray j 
Hours splendid as the past may still be thine, 
And bless thy future as thy former day.'* 



WARWICKSHIRE: THE LOAM- 
SHIRE OF GEORGE ELIOT 



Miss Mulock — Butler — Somervile — Dyer — Rugby — Homes of 
George Eliot — Scenes of Tales — Cheverel — Shepperton — 
Miltys Grave- Paddiford-Milby- Coventry, etc.-CAar- 
acters— Incidents. 

QOME one has said that to write about War- 
*** wickshire is to write about Shakespeare. 
True, the transcending fame of the bard of Avon 
gives the places associated with his life and genius 
pre-eminence, but the literary rambler will find 
in this heart of England other shrines worthy 
of homage. Inevitably our pilgrimage includes 
the Stratford scenes, — from the birthplace and 
the Hathaway cottage to the fane where all the 
world bows at Shakespeare's tomb, — but, reso- 
lutely repressing the inclination to describe again 
these oft-described resorts, we fare to less fa- 
miliar shrines : to the birthplace of the author of 
" Hudibras" and the haunts and tomb of Somer- 
vile, poet of" The Chase" and " Rural Sports ;" 
to the Rhynhill of Braddon's tale and the Kenil- 
worth of Scott's matchless romance ; to Bilton, 
where Addison sometime dwelt, and the Cal- 
thorpe home of Dyer, bard of " Grongar Hill" 
and " The Fleece," where we find his garden 
and a tree he planted which shades now his battle- 
9i 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

merited old church ; to Rugby, where we see 
the dormitory of " Tom Brown" Hughes, the 
class-rooms he shared with Clough, Matthew 
Arnold, and Dean Stanley, the grave of the 
beloved Dr. Arnold in the " Rugby Chapel" of 
his son's poem. 

At Avonmouth we find the Norton Bury of 
"John Halifax," and the old inn where Dinah 
Mulock lived while writing this her popular 
tale. The inn garden holds the yew hedge of 
the novel, «* fifteen feet high and as many thick," 
and the sward over which crept the lame Phin- 
eas : sitting there, we see the view the boy 
admired, — the old Abbey tower, the mill of Abel 
Fletcher, the river where the famished rioters 
fought for the grains the grim old man had flung 
into the water, the green level of the Ham dot- 
ted with cattle, the white sails of the encircling 
Severn, the farther sweep of country extending 
to the distant hills, — and hear the sweet-toned 
Abbey chimes and the lazy whir of the mill 
which sounded so pleasantly in Phineas's ears. 

"John Halifax" was published simultaneously 
with another tale of Warwickshire life, " Amos 
Barton." We are newly come from the London 
homes of George Eliot and her grave on the 
Highgate hill-side, and now, as we traverse sweet 
Avonvale, we gladly remember that Shakespeare's 
shire is hers as well. A jaunt of a score of 
92 



Other Shrines — Loamshire 

miles from Stratford brings us to the scenes amid 
which she was born and grew to physical and 
mental maturity. Our course by " Avon's 
stream," bowered by willows or bordered by 
meads, lies past the noble park where Shake- 
speare did not steal deer and the palace of his 
Justice Shallow where he was not arraigned for 
poaching. (We find it as impossible to keep 
Shakespeare out of our MS. as did Mr. Dick of 
" Copperfield" to keep Charles I. out of the 
memorial.) Beyond Charlecote is storied War- 
wick Castle with the old mansion of Compton 
Wyniates, dwelling of the royalist knight of 
Scott's " Woodstock," not far away. Beyond 
these again we come to the Coventry region and 
the frontier of the " Loamshire" whose character- 
istics are imaged and whose traditions, phases of 
life, and scenery are wrought with tender touch 
into poem and tale by George Eliot and so made 
familiar to all the world. Warwickshire scenery 
is not sublime; Dr. Arnold characterized it as 
"an endless monotony of enclosed fields and 
hedgerow trees." While its landscapes lack 
striking features, theirs is the quiet, unobtrusive 
beauty which Hawthorne loved and which for 
us is full of restful charm. Across sunny vales 
and gentle eminences we look away to the far-off 
Malvern Hills, whose shadowy outlines bound 
many a u Loamshire" landscape. We see vis- 
93 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

tas of low-lying meads with circling " lines of 
willows marking the watercourses ;" of slum- 
berous expanses of green or golden fields ; of 
villages grouped about gray church-towers ; of 
groves of venerable woods, — survivors of Shake- 
speare's " Forest of Arden" which erst clothed 
the countryside. We find it, indeed, " worth 
the journey hither only to see the hedgerows," — 
green, fragrant walls of hawthorn which border 
lane and highway, bound garden and field. 
With their gleaming boughs rayed by bright 
blossoms and festooned with interlacing vines, 
these barriers are often marvels of beauty and 
strength. Between miles of such hedgerows, 
and beneath lines of overshading elms, a high- 
way running northward from the town of Godiva 
and " Peeping Tom" brings us to the great 
Arbury property of the Newdigates, where we 
find the South Farm homestead in which Robert 
Evans — newly appointed agent of the estate — 
temporarily placed his family, and where, in the 
room at the left of the central chimney-stack, at 
five o'clock on the morning of St. Cecilia's day, 
1 8 19, his youngest child, Mary Ann, was born. 
It is a broad-eaved, many-gabled, two-storied 
structure of stuccoed stone, with trim hedges 
and flower-bordered garden-beds about it, a 
wider environment of lawn and woodland, and 
colonnades of the elms which figure in her poems 
94 



Birthplace and Home of George Eliot 

and were already venerable when she saw the 
light beneath their shade. On the same estate, 
near the highway between Bedworth and Nun- 
eaton, is Griff House, " the warm nest where 
her affections were fledged," to which she was 
removed at the age of four months, and where 
her first score years of life were passed. It is a 
pleasant and picturesque double-storied mansion 
of brick, quaint and comfortable. Massy ivy- 
mantles its walls, climbs to its gables, overruns 
its roofs, peeps in at its tiny-paned casements ; 
doves coo upon its ridges. About it flowers 
shine from their setting in the emerald of the 
lawn, and great trees open their leaves to the sun- 
shine and winds of summer. Spacious rooms lie 
upon either side of the entrance : of the one at 
the left, the novelist gives us a glimpse in " The 
Mill on the Floss." It is a home-like apartment, 
with low walls and a pleasant fireplace ; it was the 
dining-room and sitting-room also in the days 
when " the little wench" Mary Ann was the pet 
of the household. Here she acted charades 
with her brother Isaac and astonished the family 
. by repeating stories from " Miller's Jest Book," 
a treasured volume of hers in that early time. 
We learn from Maggie Tulliver — in whose 
childhood is pictured the author's inner life as a 
child — that Defoe's "History of the Devil" 
was another of Mary Ann's juvenile favorites, 
95 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

and her relatives preserve the worn copy she 
used to read here before this fireplace with her 
father, containing the pictures of the drowning 
witch and the devil which little Maggie explained 
to Mr. Riley in "The Mill on the Floss." 
Here, years afterward, Mary Ann heard, from 
her '* Methodist Aunt Samuel," the thrilling story 
of the girl executed for child-murder, which 
was the germ of the great romance "Adam 
Bede." The aunt, who had been a preacher in 
earlier life, remained at GrifF for some time, and 
George Eliot has told us that the character of 
Dinah Morris grew out of her recollections of 
this relative. It may be noted that in real life 
Dinah married Seth Bede, Adam being drawn in 
part — like Caleb Garth — from the novelist's 
father. In this same room, but a few years ago, 
the «' Brother" of the poem, who played here 
at charades with little Mary Ann, suddenly ex- 
pired in his chair but a few minutes after his 
return from " Shepperton Church." The win- 
dows of Mary Ann's chamber command a reach 
of the coach-road of " Felix Holt" and a farther 
vista of woodlands and fields ; in another 
chamber is the mahogany bed beneath which 
she was once found hidden to avoid going to 
school. In the roof is the attic which was 
Maggie Tulliver's retreat, where she kept her 
wooden doll with the nails in its head, and here 
96 



Scenes of her Tales 

is the chimney-stack against which that vicarious 
sufferer was ground and beaten. The death of 
her mother, Mrs. Hackit of " Barton," made 
Mary Ann mistress of Griff at sixteen. At 
Griff's gates stood the cottage of Dame Moore's 
school, where the novelist began her education, 
and where years after she used to collect the 
children of the vicinage for religious instruction 
each Sabbath. A son of Mrs. Moore lately 
lived not far away, and had more to say in praise 
of " Mary Hann" than of her surviving kinsfolk, 
who seem ashamed of their relationship to the 
novelist. In a shaded part of the garden lately 
stood a bower with a stone table, which George 
Eliot doubtless had in mind when she described 
the finding of Casaubon's corpse in the arbor at 
Lowick. The exhausted quarries in the shale 
close by, a resort of Mary Ann's girlhood, are 
the " Red Deeps" where Maggie met her lover ; 
the " brown canal" of the poem winds through 
the near hollow ; and beyond it, on *' an apology 
for an elevation of ground," is the " College" 
workhouse to which Amos Barton walked 
through the sleet to read prayers. Not far 
distant is Arbury Hall, seat of the Newdigates, 
for whom the tenant of Griff was and is agent. 
This is the Cheverel Manor of " Gilfil," an 
imposing castellated structure of gray stone, with 
flanking towers and great mullioned windows 
g 97 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

of multishaped panes, famous for its elaborately- 
decorated ceilings. That George Eliot had 
often been within this mansion is shown by her 
familiarity with the arrangement and ornamenta- 
tion of the rooms, accurately described as scenes 
of many incidents of the tale. In the grounds, 
too, the imagery of the " Love Story" may be 
perfectly realized : here are the lawn where little 
Caterina sat with Lady Cheverel, and the shim- 
mering pool, with its swans and water-lilies, 
which was searched for her corpse the morning 
of her flight ; at a little distance we find " Moss- 
lands," and the cottage of the gardener to which 
the dead body of Wybrow was carried; and, 
farther away, the spot under giant limes where 
the poor girl, coming to meet her recreant lover 
"with a dagger in her dress and murder in her 
heart," found him lying dead in the path, his 
hand clutching the dark leaves, his eyes unheed- 
ing the " sunlight that darted upon them be- 
tween the boughs." A touching incident in the 
life of a former owner of Arbury was made the 
plot of Otway's tragedy " The Orphan." 

A mile northward from Griff is the quaint 
church of Chilvers Coton, where Mary Ann 
was christened at the age of a week, where a 
little later her " devotional patience" was fostered 
by smuggled bread-and-butter, and where as 
child and woman she worshipped for twenty 
98 



Shepperton Church — Milly's Grave 

years. It is a massive stone edifice with Gothic 
windows, one of them being a memorial of the 
wife of Isaac Evans, and with a square tower 
rising above its low roofs ; at one corner, " a 
flight of stone steps, with their wooden rail run- 
ning up the outer wall," still leads to the chil- 
dren's gallery as in the days of Gilfil and Amos 
Barton, for this is the Shepperton Church of the 
tales. Within we see the memorials of Rev. 
Gilpin Ebdell (thought to be Gilfil) and of 
the original of Mrs. Farquhar ; the place where 
Gilfil read his sermons from manuscript " rather 
yellow and worn at the edges," and where Barton 
later "preached without book." About the 
renovated fane is the church-yard, with its grassy 
mounds and mouldering tombstones, one of which, 
protected by a paling and shaded by leafy boughs, 
is crowned by a funeral urn and marks the spot 
where Milly was laid, — '* the sweet mother with 
her baby in her arms," — the grave to which Bar- 
ton came back an old man with Patty supporting 
his infirm steps. Its inscription is to " Emma, 
beloved wife of Revd. John Gwyther, B.A.," 
curate here in George Eliot's girlhood : during 
his incumbency the community felt aggrieved 
for his wife on account of the prolonged stay 
at the parsonage of a strange woman who, years 
after, was described as Countess Czerlaski by 
one who as a child had seen her here. Not far 
99 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

from Milly's monument the parents of George 
Eliot lie in one grave, with Isaac, the " Brother" 
of her poem, sleeping near. By the church- 
yard wall stands the pleasant ivy-grown parson- 
age to which Gilfil brought his dark-eyed bride, 
and where, after brief months of happiness, he 
lived the long years of solitude and sorrow. 
We see the cosy parlor — smelling no longer of 
his or Barton's pipe — where the lonely old man 
sat with his dog, and above, its pretty window 
overlooking the garden, the chamber where he 
tenderly cherished the dainty belongings of his 
dead wife with the unused baby-clothes her 
fingers had fashioned, and where, in another 
tale, is laid one of the most affecting and high- 
wrought scenes in all fiction, the death of Milly 
Barton. 

A half-mile distant lies the village of Attle- 
boro, where, at the age of five, Mary Ann was 
sent to Miss Lathorn's school ; and a mile south- 
ward from GrifF, in a region blackened by pits, 
is the town of Bedworth, — '* dingy with coal- 
dust and noisy with looms," — whose men " walk 
with knees bent outward from squatting in the 
mine," and whose haggard, overworked women 
and dirty children and cottages are pathetically 
pictured in " Felix Holt." Obviously the 
changes of the half-century which has elapsed 
since George Eliot knew its wretchedness have 



Milby — Liggins 

wrought little improvement in this place, over 
which her nephew is rector : we see pale, 
hungry faces in the streets, squalor in the poor 
dwellings, proofs of pinching poverty every- 
where. A little beyond Chilvers Coton we find 
the market-town of Nuneaton, the Milby of 
the romances. The shaking of hand-looms is 
less noticeable now than in George Eliot's 
school-days here, factories having supplanted 
the cottage industry ; but the dingy, smoky 
town, with its environment of flat fields, is still 
"nothing but dreary prose." Here we find, 
near the church, " The Elms" of her girlhood, 
a tall brick edifice embowered with ivy ; on its 
garden side, the long low-ceiled school-room, 
with its heavy beams, broad windows, and plain 
furniture, where she was four years a pupil ; the 
dormitory whence she beheld the riot which she 
describes in the election-riot at Treby in «« Felix 
Holt." Another vision of her girlhood here 
was a " tall, black-coated young clergyman-in- 
embryo," Liggins by name, who afterward 
claimed the authorship of her books and so far 
imposed upon the public that a subscription was 
made for him. Mrs. Gaskell was one of the last 
to relinquish the belief that Liggins was George 
Eliot. He spent most of his time drinking, but 
did his own house-work, and was found by a 
deputation of literary admirers washing his slop- 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

basin at the pump. All about us at Nuneaton 
lie familiar objects : the cosy Bull Inn is the 
" Red Lion" where, in the opening of " Janet's 
Repentance," Dempser is discovered in theologic 
discussion, and from whose window he harangued 
the anti-Tyranite mob ; the fine old church, 
with its beautiful oaken carvings, is the sanctuary 
where Mr. Crewe, in brown Brutus wig, deliv- 
ered his " inaudible sermons," and where Mr. 
Elty preached later ; adjoining is the parsonage, 
erst redolent of Crewe's tobacco, where Janet 
helped his deaf wife to spread the luncheon for 
the bishop, and where, in the time of Elty, Bar- 
ton came to the sessions of the " Clerical Meet- 
ing and Book Society ;" on this Church street, 
" Orchard Street" of Eliot, a quaint stuccoed 
house with casement windows was Dempser's 
home, whence he thrust his wife at midnight 
into the darkness and cold ; the arched passage 
near by is that through which she fled to the 
haven of Mrs. Pettifer's house. A little way 
westward amid the pits is Stockingford, " Paddi- 
ford" of the tale, and the chapel where Mr. 
Tyran preached. A cousin of George Eliot's 
was recently a coal-master in this vicinity. 

Eight miles from Griff is Coventry, where our 
companion is one who had met Rossetti there 
forty years before. George Eliot was sometime 
a pupil of Miss Franklin's school, lately standing 



Coventry — Birds Grove 

in Little Park Street, and saw there that lady's 
father, whom she described as Rev. Rufus Lyon 
of Treby Chapel. His diminutive legs, large 
head, and other peculiarities are yet remembered 
by some who were in the school ; his home is 
accurately pictured in "Felix Holt." In the 
Foleshill suburb we find the stone villa of Birds 
Grove, which was the home of the novelist after 
Isaac Evans had succeeded his father at Griff. 
The house has been enlarged, but the apartments 
she knew are little changed : a plain little room 
above the entrance, whose window looked beyond 
the tree-tops to the superb spire of St. Michael's 
Church, — where Kemble and Siddons were mar- 
ried, — was her study, in which, despite her tasks 
as her father's housewife and nurse, she accom- 
plished much literary work. At the right of 
the window stood her desk, with an ivory crucifix 
above it, and here her translation of Strauss's 
" Leben Jesu," undertaken through the persua- 
sion of her friends at Rosehill, was written. 
Some portions of this work she found distressing ; 
she declared to Mrs. Bray that nothing but the 
sight of the Christ image enabled her to endure 
dissecting the beautiful story of the crucifixion. 
Adjoining the study is her modest bedchamber, 
and beyond it that of her father, where during 
many months of sickness she was his sole attend- 
ant, often sitting the long night through at his 
103 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

bedside with her hand in his. The grounds are 
little changed, save that the occupant has removed 
much of the foliage which formerly shrouded 
the mansion, but some of George Eliot's favorite 
trees remain on the lawn. Half a mile away is 
the pretty villa of Rosehill, whilom the home 
of Mrs. Bray and her sister Sara Hennel, who 
were the most valued friends of the novelist's 
young-womanhood and exerted the strongest in- 
fluence upon her life. Her letters to these 
friends constitute a great part of Cross's " Life." 
At Rosehill she met Chapman, Mackay, Robert 
Owen, Combe, Thackeray, Herbert Spencer, 
and others of like genius, and here she spent a 
day with Emerson and wrote next day, " I have 
seen Emerson — the first man I have ever seen." 
Sara Hennel testifies that Emerson was impressed 
with Miss Evans and declared, " That young 
lady has a serious soul." When he asked her, 
" What one book do you like best ?" and she 
replied, " Rousseau's Confessions," he quickly 
responded, " So do I : there is a point of sym- 
pathy between us." After her father's death 
she was for sixteen months a resident at Rose- 
hill, and there wrote, among other things, the re- 
view of Mackay's " Progress of the Intellect." 
Financial reverses caused the Brays long ago to 
relinquish this beautiful home, but some of this 
household were lately living in another suburb 
104 



Coventry Friends 

of Coventry and receiving an annuity bequeathed 
by George Eliot. Here, too, lately resided 
another old-time friend, the Mary Sibtree of the 
novelist's Coventry days, to whom were addressed 
some of the letters used by Cross. 

In 1 85 1 George Eliot left this circle of 
friends to become an inmate of Chapman's 
house in London, returning to them for occasional 
visits for the next few years ; then came her 
union with Lewes, after which the loved scenes 
of her youth knew her no more in the flesh ; 
but the allusions to them which run like threads 
of gold through all her work show how oft she 
revisited them in " shadowy spirit form." 



105 



YORKSHIRE SHRINES: DO- 

THEBOYS HALL AND 

ROKEBY 



Village of Bowes- Dickens-Squeers' s School— The Master and 
his Family-Haunt of Scott. 

TT^ROM the familiar shrines of Cumberland, 
•*■ the lakeside haunts of Wordsworth, 
Southey, and Coleridge, a journey across a wild 
moorland region — from whose higher crags we 
see through the fog-rifts the German Ocean and 
the Irish Sea — brings us into Gretavale, on the 
northern border of great Yorkshire. In the 
upper portion of the valley, among the outlying 
spurs of the Pennines, the storied Greta flows 
at the foot of a bleak, treeless hill on whose 
summit we find the village of Bowes. This 
was the Lavatrae of the Romans, who for three 
centuries had here a station, and remains of great 
Roman works may still be traced in the 
vicinage ; but to the literary pilgrim Bowes is 
chiefly of interest as representing " the delightful 
village of Dotheboys" described in Squeers's 
advertisement of his school in " Nicholas 
Nickleby." The aspect of the village is dreary 
and desolate in the extreme. A single street, 
steep and straight, bordered by straggling houses 
of dull gray stone, extends along the hill, which 
106 



Bowes — Dotheboys Hall 

is crowned by the church and an ancient castle : 
the dun moors decline steeply on every side, 
leaving the treeless village dismal and bare and 
often exposed to a wind " fit to knock a man off 
his legs," as Squeers said to Nicholas. In the 
midst of the village stands a cosy inn, where 
Dickens for some time lodged and was visited by 
John Browdie, and where we are shown the 
wainscoted apartment in which some portion 
of " Nickleby" was noted. At the time of 
Dickens's sojourn here, Bowes was the centre of 
the pernicious cheap-school system which he 
came to expose, and half the houses of the 
village were "academies" similar to that of 
Squeers : among them one is pointed out as 
being the place where Cobden was a pupil. 
But most interesting of all is the large house at 
the top of the hill which Dickens depicted as 
Dotheboys Hall, — by which name it was long 
known among the older dwellers of the place, — 
a long, heavy, two-storied, dingy structure of 
stone, with many windows along its front, and 
presenting, despite its bowering vines and trees, 
an aspect so chill and cheerless that one can 
scarcely conceive of a more depressing domicile 
for the neglected children who once thronged it. 
Through an archway at one end could be seen 
the pump which was frozen on the first morning 
of Nicholas's stay, and beyond it the garden 
107 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

which, by a surprising mistake, Dickens repre- 
sents a pupil to be weeding on a freezing winter's 
day. 

A few residents of the neighborhood remem- 
ber the " measther" of Dotheboys Hall ; his 
name, like Squeers's, was of one syllable and 
began with S ; in person he was not like Squeers, 
nor was he an ignorant man. A quondam pupil 
of the school informed the writer that Johnny 
S. was fairly drawn as Wackford Squeers, but 
Miss S. was a young lady of considerable refine- 
ment and was in no sense like the spiteful Fanny 
of the tale. Squeers had the largest of the 
schools, and, besides rooms in the adjoining 
house, he hired barns in which to lodge his 
many pupils. A farm attached to his house 
was cultivated by the scholars, whose food was 
chiefly oatmeal : scanty diet and liberal flogging 
was the portion of all who displeased the master. 
According to local belief, this school was not so 
bad as some of its neighbors, and no one of the 
schools realized all the wretchedness which 
Dickens portrays; yet, despite the author's 
avowal that Squeers was a representative of a 
class, and not an individual, the popular identifi- 
cation of this school as the typical Dotheboys, 
and the odium consequent thereupon, wrought 
its speedy ruin and the death of the master and 
mistress. The latter result is to be deplored, for 
1 08 



Squeers — Rokeby 

the reason that in the case of this pair the 
abhorrence seems to have been not wholly 
deserved. Two charges, at least, which affected 
them most painfully — that of goading the boys to 
suicide and that of feeding them upon the flesh of 
diseased cattle — were, by the testimony of their 
neighbors, unfounded so far as the proprietors 
of this school were concerned. Relatives of 
Squeers lately occupied Dotheboys Hall, which 
had become a farm-house, and other relatives 
and descendants are respectable denizens of the 
vicinity. Dickens's exposure of the schools led 
to their extinction and to the consignment of 
Bowes to its present somnolent condition. In 
the village church-yard lie the lovers whose 
simultaneous deaths were commemorated by 
Mallet in " Edwin and Emma." At Barnard 
Castle, a few miles away, the prototype of New- 
man Noggs is still traditionally known, and known 
as " a gentleman." 

The abounding beauties of the Greta have 
been painted by Turner and sung by Scott, both 
frequenters of this vale. From Bowes, a ram- 
ble along the lovely stream, between steep tree- 
shaded banks where it chafes and " greets" over 
the great rocks, and through mossy dells where it 
softly murmurs its content, brings us to the 
demesne of Rokeby, where Scott laid the scene 
of his famous poem. On every hand amid this 
109 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

region of enchantment, in glade and grove, in 
riven cliff and headlong torrent, in sunny slope and 
dingle's shade, we recognize the poetic imagery 
of Scott. Every turn reveals some new vista, 
rendered doubly delightful by the romantic asso- 
ciations with which the great poet has invested 
it. To the poet himself Greta's banks were 
potent allurements, and they were his habitual 
haunts during his sojourns in the valley. A de- 
scendant of the friend whom Scott visited here 
and to whom the poem is inscribed, points out 
to us a natural grotto, in the precipitous bank 
above the stream, where the poet often sat, and 
where some part of ** Rokeby" was pondered 
and composed amid the scenery it portrays. 



STERNE'S SWEET RETIRE- 
MENT 



Sutton-Crazy Castle-ToricV s Church-Parsonage- Where Tris- 
tram Shandy and the Sentimental Journey were ivritten- 
Reminiscences - Newburgh Hall - Where Sterne died- 
Sepulchre. 

A T historic old York we are fairly in the 
^*" midst of great Yorkshire : standing upon 
the tower of its colossal cathedral, we overlook 
half that ancient county. At our feet lie the 
quaint olden streets depicted in Collins's " No 
Name," where erstwhile dwelt Porteus, Defoe, 
Wallis, Lindley Murray, Mrs. Stannard, Poole of 
" Synopsis Criticorum," Burton the author im- 
mortalized by Sterne as '* Dr. Slop." Below us 
we see the feudal castle where Eugene Aram was 
hanged, the ancient city wall with its gate-ways 
and battlements, the ruins of mediaeval shrine 
and of Roman citadel and necropolis ; abroad 
we behold the vale which Bunsen pronounces 
the " most beautiful in the world (the vale of 
Normandy excepted)," with its streams, its 
mosaics of green and golden fields and sombre 
woods, its distant border of savage moors and 
uplands. The Ouse, shining like a ribbon of 
silver, flows at our feet ; we may trace its course 
from the hills of Craven on the one hand, 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

while southward we behold it " slow winding 
through the level plain" on its way to the sea ; 
into its valley we see the Wharfe flowing from 
the lovely dale where Collyer grew to manhood, 
and, farther away, the Aire emerging from the 
dreary region where lived the sad sisters Bronte 
and wove the sombre threads of their lives into 
romance. The Foss flows toward us from the 
northeast, and our view along its valley embraces 
the region where dwelt Sydney Smith, while 
rising in the north are the Hambleton Hills, 
which shelter the vale where Sterne wrote the 
books that made him famous. Indeed, this 
region of York is pervaded with memories of 
that prince of sentimentalists : in the great 
minster beneath us we find the tomb and monu- 
ment of his grandfather, once archbishop of 
this diocese ; in the carved pulpit of the min- 
ster Sterne preached as prebendary, and here he 
delivered his last sermon ; his uncle was a dig- 
nitary of the old minster ; his " indefatigably 
prolific" mother was native to this region ; his 
wife was born here, and was first seen and loved 
by Sterne within sound of the glorious minster 
bells ; most of his adult life was passed within 
sight of the minster towers. 

At Sutton, Sterne's first living, the pilgrim 
finds little to reward his devotion. Sterne's life 
here was obscure and, save in preparation, un- 



Crazy Castle 

productive. Skelton Castle was then the seat of 
his college friend Stevenson, author of " Crazy- 
Tales," etc., who was the Eugenius of" Shandy," 
and to whom the " Sentimental Journey" was in- 
scribed. Here Sterne found a library rich in rare 
treatises upon unusual subjects, in which, during 
his stay at Sutton, he spent much time and ac- 
quired a fund of odd and fanciful learning which 
constituted in part his equipment for his work. 
We find this castle nearer the stern coast which 
Yorkshire opposes to the endless thunders of the 
North Sea. Once a Roman stronghold, then a 
feudal fortress and castle of the Bruces, later a 
country-seat, it has since Sterne's time been re- 
built and modernized out of all semblance to the 
" Crazy Castle" of his letters. It is believed 
that only a few of the rooms remain substan- 
tially as he knew them. A tradition is preserved 
to the effect that during his visits here he bribed 
the servants to tie the vane with the point 
toward the west, because Eugenius would never 
leave his bed while an east wind prevailed. A 
near-by hill is called Sterne's Seat, but time has 
left here little to remind us of the sentimental 
" Yorick" who long haunted the place. It is 
only at Coxwold, fourteen miles from York and 
in the deeper depths of the shire, that we find 
many remaining objects that were associated 
with his work and with that portion of his life 

H II 3 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

which chiefly concerns the literary world. A 
result of the publication of the first part of 
" Tristram Shandy" was the presentation of this 
living to its author, and his removal to this 
sequestered retreat, which was to be his home 
during his too few remaining years. The ham- 
let has now a railway station, but the usual 
approach is by a rustic highway which conducts 
to and constitutes the village street. Within the 
hamlet we find a low-eaved road-side inn, and by 
it the shaded green where the rural festivals were 
held, and where, to celebrate the coronation of 
George III., Sterne had an ox roasted whole and 
served with great quantities of ale to his parish- 
ioners. Just beyond, Sterne's church stands in- 
tact upon a gentle eminence, overlooking a 
lovely pastoral landscape bounded by verdant 
hills. The church dates from the fifteenth cen- 
tury and is a pleasing structure of perpendicular 
Gothic style, with a shapely octagonal tower 
embellished with fretted pinnacles and a para- 
pet of graceful design. One window has been 
filled with stained glass, but Sterne's pulpit 
remains, and the interior of the edifice is scarcely 
changed since he preached here his quaint ser- 
mons. The walls are plain ; the low ceiling is 
divided by beams whose intersections are marked 
by grotesque bosses ; the whole effect is depress- 
ing, and to the sensitive " Yorick" — haunted as 
114 



Sterne's Church— Shandy Hall 

he was by habitual dread that his ministrations 
might provoke a fatal pulmonary hemorrhage — 
it must have been dismal indeed. Among the 
effigied tombs of the Fauconbergs which line 
the chancel we find that of Sterne's friend who 
gave him this living. 

Beyond the church and near the highway 
stands the quaint and picturesque old edifice 
where dwelt Sterne during the eight famous 
years of his life. In his letters he calls it 
Castle Shandy, and in all the countryside it is 
now known as Shandy Hall, shandy meaning in 
the local dialect crack-brained. It is a long, 
rambling, low-eaved fabric, with many heavy 
gables and chimneys, and steep roofs of tiles. 
Curious little casements are under the eaves; 
larger windows look out from the gables and are 
aligned nearer the ground, many of them shaded 
by the dark ivy which clings to the old walls 
and overruns the roofs. Abutting the kitchen is 
an astounding pyramidal structure of masonry — 
an Ailsa Craig in shape and solidity, yet more 
resembling Stromboli with its emissions of 
smoke, — which, beginning at the ground as a 
buttress, terminates as a kitchen-chimney and 
imparts to this portion of the house an archi- 
tectural character altogether unique. Shrubbery 
grows about the old domicile, venerable trees 
which may have cast their shade upon ** Yorick" 
"5 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

himself are by the door, and the aspect of the 
place is decidedly attractive. To Sir George 
Wombwell, who inherits the Fauconberg estate 
through a daughter of Sterne's patron, we are 
indebted for the preservation of the exterior of 
the house in the condition it was when Sterne 
inhabited it; but the interior has been parti- 
tioned into two dwellings and thus considerably 
altered. However, we may see the same 
sombre wainscots and low ceiling that Sterne 
knew, and we find the one room which inter- 
ests us most — Sterne's parlor and study — little 
changed. It is a pleasant apartment, with win- 
dows looking into the garden, where stood the 
summer-house in which he sometimes wrote, 
and beyond which was the sward where " my 
uncle Toby" habitually demonstrated the siege 
of Namur and Dendermond. On the low walls 
of this room Sterne disposed his seven hundred 
books, — -" bought at a purchase dog-cheap," — and 
here he wrote, besides his sermons, seven volumes 
of " Tristram Shandy" and the ■* Sentimental 
Journey." There is a local tradition that other 
MSS. written here were found by the succeed- 
ing tenant and used to line the hangings of the 
room. Sterne's letters afford glimpses of him 
in this room : in one we see him " before the 
fire, with his cat purring beside him ;" in 
another he is "sitting here and cudgelling his 
116 



Sterne's Parsonage — Study 

brains" for ideas, though he usually wrote 
facilely and rapidly ; in another he shows us a 
prettier picture, in which '• My Lydia" (his 
daughter) " helps to copy for me, and my wife 
knits and listens as I read her chapters ;" and 
later, after his estrangement from Mrs. Sterne, 
we see him " sitting here alone, as sad and soli- 
tary as a tomcat, which by the way is all the 
company I keep." In the repose of this charm- 
ing place, and amid the peaceful influences about 
him here in his pretty home, Sterne appears at 
his best. And here for a time he was happy ; 
we find his letters attesting, '« I am in high spirits, 
care never enters this cottage ;" " I am happy as 
a prince at Coxwold ;" " I wish you could see 
in what a princely manner I live. I sit down to 
dinner — fish and wild fowl, or a couple of fowls, 
with cream and all the simple plenty a rich 
valley can produce, with a clean cloth on my 
table and a bottle of wine on my right hand to 
drink your health." But the melancholy days 
came all too soon ; the " bursting of vessels in 
his lungs" became more and more frequent, his 
struggle with dread consumption was inaugurated, 
and now his letters from the pretty parsonage 
abound with references to his "vile cough, 
weak nerves, dismal headaches," etc. Now his 
" sweet retirement" has become " a cuckoldy 
retreat ;" he complains of its situation, of its 
117 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

" death-doing, pestiferous wind." Returning to 
it from a sentimental journey or from a brilliant 
season of lionizing in London, he finds its quiet 
and seclusion insufferably irksome. Mortally ill, 
growing old, hopelessly estranged from his wife, 
deprived of the companionship of his idolized 
child, the poor master of Castle Shandy is u sad 
and desolate," his " pleasures are few," he sits 
"alone in silence and gloom." Such were some 
of the diverse phases of his life which these 
dumb walls have witnessed ; in the dismalest, 
they have seen him at his desk here, resolutely 
ignoring his ills and tracing the passages of wit 
and fancy which were to delight the world. 
The incomplete " Sentimental Journey" was 
written in his last months of life. 

A mile from Sterne's cottage, and approached 
by a way oft trodden by him and his " little 
Lyd," is Newburgh Hall, the ancient seat of 
Sterne's friend. Parts of the walls of a priory 
founded here in 1145 are incorporated into the 
oldest portion of the hall, and this has been 
added to by successive generations until a great, 
incongruous pile has resulted, which, however, 
is not devoid of picturesque beauty. Within 
this mansion Sterne was a familiar guest : urged 
by the friendly persistence of Fauconberg, he 
frequently came here to chat or dine with his 
friend and the guests of the hall, his brilliant 
118 



Place of Sterne's Death and Burial 

converse making him the life of the company. 
Among the family portraits here are that of his 
benefactor and one of Mary Cromwell, wife of 
the second Fauconberg, who preserved here 
many relics of the great Protector, including his 
bones, which were somehow rescued from 
Tyburn and concealed in a mass of masonry in 
an upper apartment of the hall. 

Sterne was not only popular with his lordly 
neighbor of Newburgh, but also, improbable as 
it would seem, with the illiterate yeomen who 
were his parishioners : although they understood 
not the sermons and found the sermonizer in 
most regards a hopeless enigma, yet, according 
to the traditions of the place, these simple 
folk discerned something in the complexly 
blended character of the creator of " my uncle 
Toby" which elicited their esteem and prompted 
many acts "of love and service. In a letter to an 
American friend, Arthur Lee, Sterne writes, 
" Not a parishioner catches a hare, a rabbit, or a 
trout, but he brings it an offering to me." 

As set forth by the inscription at Sterne's cot- 
tage, he died in London. One autumn day we 
find ourselves pondering the sad event of his last 
sojourn in the great city, as we stand upon the 
spot where his " truceless fight with disease" was 
ended, barely a fortnight after the " Sentimental 
Journey" was issued. His wish to die " un- 
119 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

troubled by the concern of his friends and the 
last service of wiping his brows and smoothing 
his pillow" was literally realized. During the 
publication of the "Journey" he lodged in 
rooms above a silk-bag shop in Old Bond Street ; 
here he rapidly sank, and in the evening of 
March 1 8, 1768, attended only by a hireling 
who robbed his body, and in the presence of a 
staring footman, the dying man suddenly cried, 
" Now it is come !" and, raising his hand as if to 
repel a blow, expired. A few furlongs distant, 
opposite Hyde Park, we find an old cemetery 
hidden from the streets by houses and high walls 
which shut out the din of the great city. Here, 
in seclusion almost as complete as that of the 
graveyard of his own Coxwold, Sterne was 
consigned to earth. The spot is overlooked by 
the windows of Thackeray's sometime home. 
An old tree stands close by, and in its boughs 
tfye birds twitter above us as we essay to read the 
inscription which marks Sterne's poor sepulchre. 
But, mean and neglected as it is, we may never 
know that his ashes found rest even here; a 
report which has too many elements of prob- 
ability and which never was disproved, avers 
that the grave was desecrated and that a horror- 
stricken friend recognized Sterne's mutilated 
corse upon the dissecting-table of a medical 
school. " Alas, poor Yorick !" 



HA WORTH AND THE 
BRONTES 

The Village - Black Bull Inn- Church -Vicarage- Memory- 
haunted Rooms-Bronte Tomb-Moors-Bronte Cascade- 
Wuthering Heights-Humble Friends-Relic and Recollec- 
tion. 

/"\THER Bronte shrines have engaged us, — 
^•^ Guiseley, where Patrick Bronte was mar- 
ried and Neilson worked as a mill-girl ; the 
lowly Thornton home, where Charlotte was 
born ; the cottage where she visited Harriet 
Martineau ; the school where she found Caro- 
line Helstone and Rose and Jessy Yorke ; the 
Fieldhead, Lowood, and Thornfield of her tales ; 
the Villette where she knew her hero ; but it 
is the bleak Haworth hill-top where the Brontes 
wrote the wonderful books and lived the pathetic 
lives that most attracts and longest holds our 
steps. Our way is along Airedale, now a high- 
way of toil and trade, desolated by the need of 
hungry poverty and greed of hungrier wealth : 
meads are replaced by blocks of grimy huts, 
groves are supplanted by factory chimneys that 
assoil earth and heaven, the once "shining" 
stream is filthy with the refuse of many mills. 
At Keighley our walk begins, and, although we 
have no peas in our " pilgrim shoon," the way 
is heavy with memories of the sad sisters Bronte 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

who so often trod the dreary miles which bring 
us to Haworth. The village street, steep as a 
roof, has a pavement of rude stones, upon which 
the wooden shoes of the villagers clank with an 
unfamiliar sound. The dingy houses of gray 
stone, barren and ugly in architecture, are hud- 
dled along the incline and encroach upon the 
narrow street. The place and its situation are a 
proverb of ugliness in all the countryside ; one 
dweller in Airedale told us that late in the even- 
ing of the last day of creation it was found that 
a little rubbish was left, and out of that Haworth 
was made. But, grim and rough as it is, the 
genius of a little woman has made the place 
illustrious and draws to it visitors from every 
quarter of the world. We are come in the 
" glory season" of the moors, and as we climb 
through the village we behold above and beyond 
it vast undulating sweeps of amethyst-tinted 
hills rising circle beyond circle, — all now one 
great expanse of purple bloom stirred by zephyrs 
which waft to us the perfume of the heather. 

At the hill-top we come to the Black Bull Inn, 
where one Bronte drowned his genius in drink, 
and from our apartment here we look upon all the 
shrines we seek. The inn stands at the church- 
yard gates, and is one of the landmarks of the 
place. Long ago preacher Grimshaw flogged 
the loungers from its tap-room into chapel ; 



Black Bull Inn 

here Wesley and Whitefield lodged when holding 
meetings on the hill-top ; here Bronte's prede- 
cessor took refuge from his riotous parishioners, 
finally escaping through the low casement at the 
back, — out of which poor Branwell Bronte used 
to vault when his sisters asked for him at the 
door. This inn is a quaint structure, low-eaved 
and cosy ; its furniture is dark with age. We 
sleep in a bed once occupied by Henry J. Ray- 
mond, and so lofty that steps are provided to 
ascend its heights. Our meals are served in the 
old-fashioned parlor to which Branwell came. 
In a nook between the fireplace and the before- 
mentioned casement stood the tall arm-chair, 
with square seat and quaintly carved back, which 
was reserved for him. The landlady denied 
that he was summoned to entertain travellers 
here : " he never needed to be sent for, he came 
fast enough of himseP." His wit and convivi- 
ality were usually the life of the circle, but at 
times he was mute and abstracted and for hours 
together " would just sit and sit in his corner 
there." She described him as a "little, red- 
haired, light-complexioned chap, cleverer than 
all his sisters put together. What they put in 
their books they got from him," quoth she, re- 
minding us of the statement in Grundy's Remi- 
niscences that Branwell declared he invented the 
plot and wrote the major part of " Wuthering 
123 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

Heights." Certain it is he possessed transcend- 
ing genius and that in this room that genius was 
slain. Here he received the message of re- 
nunciation from his depraved mistress which 
finally wrecked his life ; the landlady, entering 
after the messenger had gone, found him in a fit 
on the floor. Emily Bronte's rescue of her dog, 
an incident recorded in " Shirley," occurred at 
the inn door. 

The graveyard is so thickly sown with black- 
ened tombstones that there is scant space for 
blade or foliage to relieve its dreariness, and the 
villagers, for whom the yard is a thoroughfare, 
step from tomb to tomb : in the time of the 
Brontes the village women dried their linen on 
these graves. Close to the wall which divides 
the church-yard from the vicarage is a plain stone 
set by Charlotte Bronte to mark the grave of 
Tabby, the faithful servant who served the 
Brontes from their childhood till all but Charlotte 
were dead. The very ancient church-tower 
still " rises dark from the stony enclosure of its 
yard ;" the church itself has been remodelled and 
much of its romantic interest destroyed. No 
interments have been made in the vaults beneath 
the aisles since Mr. Bronte was laid there. The 
site of the Bronte pew is by the chancel ; here 
Emily sat in the farther corner, Anne next, and 
Charlotte by the door, within a foot of the spot 
124 



Church — Bronte* Tomb 

where her ashes now lie. A former sacristan 
remembered to have seen Thackeray and Miss 
Martineau sitting with Charlotte in the pew. 
And here, almost directly above her sepulchre, 
she stood one summer morning and gave herself 
in marriage to the man who served for her as 
" faithfully and long as did Jacob for Rachel." 
The Bronte tablet in the wall bears a uniquely 
pathetic record, its twelve lines registering 
eight deaths, of which Mr. Bronte's, at the age 
of eighty-five, is the last. On a side aisle is a 
beautiful stained window inscribed " To the 
Glory of God, in Memory of Charlotte Bronte, 
by an American citizen." The list shows that 
most of the visitors come from America, and it was 
left for a dweller in that far land to set up here 
almost the only voluntary memento of England's 
great novelist. A worn page of the register 
displays the tremulous autograph of Charlotte 
as she signs her maiden name for the last time, 
and the signatures of the witnesses to her mar- 
riage, — Miss Wooler, of ** Roe Head," and 
Ellen Nussy, who is the E of Charlotte's letters 
and the Caroline of " Shirley." 

The vicarage and its garden are out of a cor- 
ner of the church-yard and separated from it by 
a low wall. A lane lies along one side of the 
church-yard and leads from the street to the 
vicarage gates. The garden, which was Emily's 
125 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

care, where she tended stunted shrubs and 
borders of unresponsive flowers and where 
Charlotte planted the currant-bushes, is beauti- 
ful with foliage and flowers, and its boundary- 
wall is overtopped by a screen of trees which 
shuts out the depressing prospect of the graves 
from the vicarage windows and makes the place 
seem less " a church-yard home" than when the 
Brontes inhabited it. The dwelling is of gray 
stone, two stories high, of plain and sombre as- 
pect. A wing is added, the little window-panes 
are replaced by larger squares, the stone floors 
are removed or concealed, curtains — forbidden 
by Mr. Bronte's dread of lire — shade the win- 
dows, and the once bare interior is furbished and 
furnished in modern style ; but the arrangement 
of the apartments is unchanged. Most interest- 
ing of these is the Bronte parlor, at the left of 
the entrance ; here the three curates of" Shirley" 
used to take tea with Mr. Bronte and were up- 
braided by Charlotte for their intolerance ; here 
the sisters discussed their plots and read each 
other's MSS. ; here they transmuted the sorrows 
of their lives into the stories which make the 
name of Bronte immortal ; here Emily, " her 
imagination occupied with Wuthering Heights," 
watched in the darkness to admit Branwell com- 
ing late and drunken from the Black Bull ; here 
Charlotte, the survivor of all, paced the night- 
126 



Bronte Parsonage — Apartments 

watches in solitary anguish, haunted by the 
vanished faces, the voices forever stilled, the 
echoing footsteps that came no more. Here, 
too, she lay in her coffin. The room behind 
the parlor was fitted by Charlotte for Nichols's 
study. On the right was Bronte's study, and 
behind it the kitchen, where the sisters read with 
their books propped on the table before them 
while they worked, and where Emily (prototype 
of « Shirley"), bitten by a dog at the gate of 
the lane, took one of Tabby's glowing irons 
from the fire and cauterized the wound, telling 
no one till danger was past. Above the parlor 
is the chamber in which Charlotte and Emily 
died, the scene of Nichols's loving ministrations 
to his suffering wife. Above Bronte's study was 
his chamber ; the adjoining children's study was 
later Branwell's apartment and the theatre of the 
most terrible tragedies of the stricken family ; 
here that ill-fated youth writhed in the horrors 
of mania-a-potu ; here Emily rescued him — 
stricken with drunken stupor — from his burning 
couch, as "Jane Eyre" saved Rochester ; here he 
breathed out his blighted life erect upon his 
feet, his pockets filled with love-letters from the 
perfidious woman who wrought his ruin. Even 
now the isolated site of the parsonage, its en- 
vironment of graves and wild moors, its exposure 
to the fierce winds of the long winters, make 
1*7 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

it unspeakably dreary; in the Bronte time it 
must have been cheerless indeed. Its influence 
darkened the lives of the inmates and left its 
fateful impression upon the books here produced. 
Visitors are rarely admitted to the vicarage ; 
among those against whom its doors have been 
closed is the gifted daughter of Charlotte's 
literary idol, to whom "Jane Eyre" was dedi- 
cated, Thackeray. 

By the vicarage lane were the cottage of 
Tabby's sister, the school the Brontes daily 
visited, and the sexton's dwelling where the 
curates lodged. Behind the vicarage a savage 
expanse of gorse and heather rises to the horizon 
and stretches many miles away : a path oft trod- 
den by the Brontes leads between low walls 
from their home to this open moor, their habit- 
ual resort in childhood and womanhood. The 
higher plateaus afford a wide prospect, but, 
despite the August bloom and fragrance and the 
delightful play of light and shadow along the 
sinuous sweeps, the aspect of the bleak, treeless, 
houseless waste of uplands is even now dispirit- 
ing ; when frosts have destroyed its verdure 
and wintry skies frown above, its gloom and 
desolation must be terrible beyond description. 
Remembering that the sisters found even these 
usually dismal moors a welcome relief from their 
tomb of a dwelling, we may appreciate the utter 
128 



The Moors — Wuthering Heights 

dreariness of their situation and the pathos of 
Charlotte's declaration, "I always dislike to 
leave Haworth, it takes so long to be content 
again after I return." We trace the steps of 
the Brontes across the moor to the cascade, 
called now the " Bronte Falls," where a brook- 
let descends over great boulders into a shaded 
glen. This was their favorite excursion, and 
as we loiter here we recall their many visits 
to the spot: first they came four children to 
play upon these rocks ; later came three grave 
maidens with Caroline Helstone or Rose Yorke ; 
later came two saddened women ; and then Char- 
lotte came alone, finding the moor a featureless 
wilderness full of torturing reminders of her 
dead, and seeing their vanished forms " in the 
blue tints, the pale mists, the waves and shadows 
of the horizon." Later still, during her few 
months of happiness, she came here many times 
with her husband, and her last walk on earth was 
made with him to see the cascade " in its winter 
wildness and power." 

Above the village was the parsonage of Grim- 
shaw and the original " Wuthering Heights." 
It was a sombre structure ; a few trees grew 
about it, the moors rose behind ; the apartments 
were like the oak-lined, stone-paved interior 
pictured in the tale, while the inscription above 
the door, H E 1659, was changed to Hareton 
1 129 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

Earnshaw 1 500 by Miss Bronte, who described 
here much of her own grandfather's early life 
and suffering and portrayed his wife in Catherine 
Linton. It is notable that the name Earnshaw 
and other names in the Bronte books may be 
seen on shop-signs along the way the sisters 
walked to Keighley. 

Among the villagers we meet some who re- 
member the Brontes with affection and pride. 
We find them so uniformly courteous that we 
are willing to doubt Mrs. Gaskell's ascriptions 
of surly rudeness. They indignantly deny the 
statements of Reid, Gaskell, and others regard- 
ing the character of Mr. Bronte. One whose 
relations to that clergyman entitle him to 
credence assures us that Bronte did not destroy 
his wife's silk dress, nor burn his children's 
colored shoes, nor discharge pistols as a safety- 
valve for his temper : " he didn't have that sort 
of a temper." It would appear that many 
charges of the biographers were made upon the 
authority of a peculating servant whom Bronte 
had angered by dismissal. Some parishioners 
testify that " the Brontes had odd ways of 
their own," " went their gait and didn't meddle 
o'ermuch with us ;" ** nobody had a word against 
them." Charlotte's husband, too, became pop- 
ular after her death, perhaps at first because 
of his tender care of her father : " to see the 
130 



Recollections of the Bronte's 

good old man and Nichols together when the 
rest were dead, and Mr. Bronte so helpless and 
blind, was just a pretty sight." We hear more 
than once of Bronte's wonderful cravat : he 
habitually covered it himself, putting on new 
silk without removing the old, until in the course 
of years it became one of the sights of the 
place, having acquired such phenomenal propor- 
tions that it concealed half his head. Many 
still remember hearing him preach from the 
depths of this cravat, while the sexton perambu- 
lated the aisles with a staff to stir up the sleepers 
and threaten the lads. Mr. Wood, a cabinet- 
maker of the village, was church-warden in 
Bronte's incumbency and an intimate friend of 
the family till the death of the last member : his 
loving hands fashioned the coffins for them all. 
He was sent for to see Richmond's portrait of 
Charlotte on its arrival, and was laughed at by 
that lady for not recognizing the likeness ; while 
Tabby insisted that a portrait of Wellington, 
which came in the same case, was a picture of 
Mr. Bronte. That clergyman often complained 
to Wood that Mrs. Gaskell " tried to make us 
all appear as bad as she could." We find some 
survivors of Charlotte's Sunday-school class 
among the villagers. From one, who was also 
singer in Bronte's church choir, we obtain 
pictures of the church and rectory as they ap- 
131 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

peared in Charlotte's lifetime and a photographic 
copy of Branwell's painting of himself and sis- 
ters, in which the likenesses are said to be ex- 
cellent. Charlotte is remembered as being 
" good looking," having a wealth of lustrous 
hair and remarkably expressive eyes. She was 
usually neatly apparelled in black, and was so 
small that when Mrs. F. entered her class, at the 
age of twelve, the pupil was larger than the 
teacher. Another of Charlotte's class remem- 
bers her as being nervously quick in all her 
movements and a rapid walker ; a third stood in 
the church-yard and saw her pass from the vicar- 
age to the church on the morning of her mar- 
riage wearing a very plain bridal dress and a 
white bonnet trimmed with green leaves. A 
few brief months later this person, from the 
same spot, beheld the mortal part of her im- 
mortal friend borne by a grief-stricken company 
along the same path to her burial. In the hands 
of another of Charlotte's pupils we see a vol- 
ume of the original edition of the poems of 
the three sisters, presented by Charlotte, and a 
Yorkshire collection of hymns which contains 
some of Anne's sweet verses. 

It is evident that, of all the family, the hapless 

Branwell was most admired by the villagers. 

They delight to extol his pleasant manners, his 

ready repartee, his wonderful learning, his am- 

i 3 z 



Branwell Bronte — Bronte Relics 

bidextrousness, his personal courage. On one 
occasion restraint was required to prevent his 
attacking alone a dozen mill-rioters, " any one of 
whom could have put him in his pocket." 
Holding a pen in each hand, he could simul- 
taneously write letters on two dissimilar subjects 
while he discoursed on a third. Wood thought 
him naturally the brightest of the family, and 
believed that lack of occupation, in a place 
where there was nothing to stimulate mental 
effort, accounted for his vices and failures. He 
came often with his sisters to Wood's house, and 
would talk by the hour of his projects to achieve 
fame and fortune. One of his associates pre- 
served some letters received from him while he 
was " away tutoring," in which he shamelessly 
recorded his follies and referred to himself as a 
"Joseph in Egypt." A local society has col- 
lected in its museum some Bronte mementos : a 
relative of Martha, Tabby's successor in the 
household, saved a few, — Charlotte's silken 
purse, her thimble-case and some articles of 
dress, elementary drawings made by the sisters, 
autograph letters of Charlotte and her copies of 
the " Quarterly" and other periodicals in which 
she had read the reviews of "Jane Eyre." 
Among the treasures Wood preserved were 
sketches by Emily and Branwell; a signatured 
set of Bronte volumes presented by Bronte the 
133 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

day before his death ; Charlotte's worn history 
containing annotations in her microscopic chi- 
rography ; a copy of " Jane Eyre" presented by 
Charlotte before its authorship was ascertained ; 
an article on " Advantages of Poverty," by Mrs. 
Bronte ; a highly graphic tale and religious poems 
by Mr. Bronte. Comment upon the latter re- 
minded Wood that Bronte had shown him some 
poems by an Irish ancestor Hugh Bronte, and 
that he had met at the vicarage an irate relative 
who came from Ireland with a shillalah to 
" break the head" of a cruel critic of " Jane 
Eyre." Most of the Bronte belongings were 
removed by Mr. Nichols. He served the parish 
assiduously, as the people declare, for fifteen 
years, and at Bronte's death they desired that 
Nichols should succeed him ; but the living was 
bestowed upon a stranger, and Nichols removed 
to the south of Ireland, where he married his 
cousin and is now a gentleman farmer. Martha 
Brown, the devoted servant of the family, accom- 
panied him, and Nancy Wainwright, the Brontes' 
nurse, died some years ago in Bradford work- 
house : so every living vestige of the family has 
disappeared from the vicinage. 

A resident of near-by Wharfedale lately pos- 
sessed a package of Charlotte's essays, written 
at the Brussels school and amended by " M. 
Paul." Study of these confirms the belief that 
i34 



Charlotte Bronte's Husband 

she was for a time tortured by a hopeless love 
for her preceptor, husband of " Madame Beck," 
and that it was this wretched passage in her life, 
rather than the fall of her brother, which 
*' drove her to literary speech for relief." Her 
marriage with Nichols was eventually happy, 
but her own descriptions of him show that his 
were not the attributes that would please her 
fancy or readily gain her love. In " Shirley" 
she writes of him as successor of Malone : ". the 
circumstance of finding himself invited to tea 
with a Dissenter would unhinge him for a week ; 
the spectacle of a Quaker wearing his hat in 
church, the thought of an unbaptized fellow- 
creature being interred with Christian rites, 
these things would make strange havoc in his 
physical and mental economy." In a letter to 
E. Charlotte writes, " I am not to marry Mr. 
Nichols. I couldn't think of mentioning such 
a rumor to him, even as a joke. It would make 
me the laughing-stock of himself and fellow- 
curates for half a year to come. They regard 
me as an old maid, and I regard them, one and all, 
as highly uninteresting, narrow, and unattractive 
specimens of the coarser sex." Why then did 
she finally accept Mr. Nichols? Was it not 
from the same motive that had led her to 
reject his addresses not long before, the desire to 
please her father ? 

i35 



EARLY HAUNTS OF ROBERT 
COLLYER: EUGENE ARAM 



Childhood Home - Ilkley Scenes, Friends, Smithy, Chapel - 
Bolton— Associations- Wordsworth-Rogers-Eliot- Turner- 
Aram's Homes-Schools-Place of the Murder-Gibbet- 
Probable Innocence. 

' I *HE factory-town of Keighley, — amid the 
moors of western Yorkshire, — to which the 
Bronte pilgrimage brings us, becomes itself an 
object of interest when we remember it was the 
birthplace of Robert Collyer. On a dingy 
side-street resonant with the din of spindles and 
looms and sullied with soot from factory chim- 
neys, of humble parentage, and in a home not 
less lowly than that of another Yorkshire black- 
smith in which Faraday was born, our orator 
and author first saw the light. Collyer came to 
Keighley " only to be born," and soon was re- 
moved to the lovely Washburndale, a few miles 
away. Here we find the place of the boyhood 
home he has made known to us — the cottage of 
two rooms with whitewashed walls and floor 
of flags — occupied by the mansion of a mill- 
owner, and the Collyer family vanished from 
the vicinage. "Little Sam," the kind-hearted 
father, fell dead at his anvil one summer day ; 
the blue-eyed, fair-haired mother, of whom the 
136 



Early Home — School — Companions 

preacher so loves to speak, died in benign age ; 
and the boisterous bairns who once filled the cot- 
tage are scattered in the Old World and the New. 
A little way down the sparkling burn is the pictu- 
resque old church of Fewston, where Collyer 
was christened, where Amos Barton of George 
Eliot's tale later preached, and where the poet 
Edward Fairfax — of the ancient family which 
gave to Virginia its best blood — was buried with 
his child who " was held to have died of witch- 
craft." Near by was Collyer's school, taught by 
a crippled and cross-eyed old fiddler named 
Willie Hardie, who survived at our first sojourn 
in the dale and had much to tell about his pupil 
" Boab," whom he had often " fairly thrashed." 
Collyer's school education ended in his eighth 
year, and he was early apprenticed at Ilkley, in 
the next valley, where he grew to physical 
manhood and attained to a measure of that intel- 
lectual stature which has since been recognized. 
At Ilkley we find some who remember when 
Collyer came first, a stripling lad, to work in 
" owd Jackie's" smithy, and who in the long-ago 
worked, played, and fought with him in the 
village or read with him on the moors. One 
remembers that he was from the first an insatiable 
student, often reading as he plied the bellows or 
switched the flies from a customer's horse. His 
master "Jackie" Birch, who was native of 
137 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

Eugene Aram's home, is recalled as a selfish and 
unpopular man, who had no sympathy with the 
lad's studious habit, but tolerated it when it did 
not interfere with his work. Collyer's love of 
books was contagious, and soon a little circle of 
lads habitually assembled, whenever released 
from toil, to read with him the volumes borrowed 
from friends or purchased by clubbing their own 
scant hoards. A survivor of this group walked 
with us through the village, pointing out the 
spots associated with Collyer's life here, and 
afterward showed us upon the slopes of the 
overlooking hills the nooks where the lads read 
together in summer holidays. Collyer was 
especially intimate with the Dobsons : of these 
John was best beloved, because he shared most 
fully Collyer's studies and aspirations ; between 
the two an affectionate friendship was formed 
which, despite long separation and disparity of 
position, — for John remained a laborer, — ended 
only with his death. When, thirty years ago 
Collyer — honored and famous — revisited the 
scenes of his early struggles and was eagerly in- 
vited to opulent and cultured homes, he turned 
away from all to abide in the humble cottage of 
Dobson, which we found near the site of the 
smithy and occupied by others who were friends 
of Collyer's youth. His associates of the early 
time — some of them old and poor — tell us with 
138 



Collyer's Humble Friends — The Smithy 

obvious pleasure and pride of his visits to their 
poor homes in these later summers when he 
comes to the place, and we suspect he often 
leaves with them more substantial tokens of his 
remembrance than kind words and wishes : 
indeed, he once made us his almoner to the more 
needy of them, one of whom we found in the 
workhouse. Some of his old-time friends recall 
the circumstances of his conversion under the 
preaching of a Wesleyan named Bland, his own 
eloquent and touching prayers, and his first tim- 
orous essays to conduct the services of the little 
chapel to which the villagers were bidden by 
the bellman, who proclaimed through the streets, 
" The blacksmith will preach t'night." When 
he preaches at Ilkley now, the Assembly-rooms 
are thronged with friends, old and new, eager to 
hear him. "Jackie" sleeps with his fathers, and 
the smithy is replaced by a modern cottage, into 
whose masonry many blackened stones from the 
old forge were incorporated. One of Collyer's 
chums showed us the door of the smithy which 
he had rescued from demolition and religiously 
preserved, and presented us with a photograph 
which we were assured represents the building 
just as Collyer knew it, — a long, low fabric of 
stone, with a shed joined at one end, two forge 
chimneys rising out of the roof, and the rough 
doors and window-shutters placarded with public 
139 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

notices. Before the forge was demolished, the 
large two-horned anvil on which Collyer 
wrought twelve years was bought for a price 
and removed to Chicago, where it is still pre- 
served in the study of Unity Church, albeit 
Collyer long ago predicted to the writer, with 
a characteristic twinkle and a sweet hint of the 
dialect his tongue was born to, " they'll soon 
be sellin* thet for old iron." 

The health-giving waters of the hill-sides attract 
hundreds of invalids and idlers, and the Ilkley of 
to-day is a smart town of well-kept houses, 
hotels, and shops, amid which we find here and 
there a quaint low-roofed structure which is a 
relic of the village of Collyer's boyhood. 
Among the survivals is the chapel — now a 
local museum, inaugurated by Collyer — where 
our " blacksmith" was converted and where he 
labored at the spiritual anvil as a local preacher. 
He has told us that for his labors in the Wes- 
leyan pulpit during several years in Yorkshire 
and America he received in all seven dollars and 
fifty cents ; he expounded for love, but pounded 
for a living. Another survival is the ancient 
parish church, built upon the site of the Roman 
fortress Olicana and of stones from its ruined 
walls, which preserves in its masonry many anti- 
quarian treasures of Roman sculpture and in- 
scription. Standing without are three curious 
140 



Wharfedale Antiquities — Scenery 

monolithic columns, graven with mythological 
figures of men, dragons, birds, etc., which give 
them an archaeological value beyond price. A 
doltish rector damaged them by using them as 
gate-posts ; from this degradation the hands of 
Collyer helped to rescue them, and the same 
hands fashioned at the forge the neat iron gates 
which enclose the church-yard. 

By the village and through the dale which 
Gray thought so beautiful flows the Wharfe; 
winding amid verdant meads, rushing between 
lofty banks, or loitering in sunny shallows, it 
holds its shining course to the Ouse, beyond the 
fateful field of Towton, where the red rose of 
Lancaster went down in blood. Ilkley nestles 
cosily at the foot of green slopes which swell 
away from the stream and are dotted with copses 
and embowered villas. Farther away the dim 
lines rise to the heights of the Whernside, 
whence we look to the chimneys of Leeds and 
the towers of York's mighty minster. Detached 
from Rumbald's cliffs lie two masses, called 
" Cow and Calf Rocks," bearing the imprint of 
giant Rumbald's foot : these rocks are a resort 
of the young people, and here Collyer and his 
friends oft came with their books. From this 
point Wharfedale, domed by a summer sky, 
seems a paradise of loveliness ; its every aspect, 
from the glinting stream to the highest moor- 
141 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

land crags, is replete with the beauty Turner 
loved to paint and which here first inspired his 
genius. Ruskin discerns this Wharfedale scenery 
throughout the great artist's works, bits of its 
beauty being unconsciously wrought into other 
scenes. These landscapes were a daily vision to 
the eyes of Collyer in the days when Turner 
still came to the neighborhood. This region 
abounds with memorials of the mighty past, 
with treasures of Druidical, Runic, and Roman 
history and tradition, but the literary pilgrim 
finds it rife with associations for him still more 
interesting : here lived the ancestors of our 
Longfellow, and the family whence Thackeray 
sprang ; the fathers of that gentle singer, Heber, 
dwelt in their castle here and sleep now under 
the pavement of the church ; a little way across 
the moors the Brontes dwelt and died. Here, 
too, lived the Fairfaxes, — one of them a poet 
and translator of Tasso, — and among their tombs 
we find that of Fawkes of Farnley, Turner's 
early friend and patron, while at the near-by hall 
are the rooms the painter occupied during the 
years he was transferring to canvas the beauties 
he here beheld. Farnley holds the best private 
collection of Turner's works, comprising, besides 
many finished pictures, numerous drawings and 
color-sketches made here. 

A delightful excursion from Ilkley, one never 
Hz 



Bolton Abbey — Nidderdale 

omitted by Collyer from his summer saunter- 
ings in Wharfedale, is to the sacred shades of 
Bolton Abbey. The way is enlivened with the 
prattle and sheen of the limpid Wharfe. A 
mile past the hamlet of Addingham, where 
Collyer preached his first sermon, the stream 
curves about a slight eminence which is crowned 
by the ruins of the ancient shrine. Some por- 
tions of the walls are fallen and concealed by 
shrubbery ; other portions withstand the ravages 
of the centuries, and we see the crumbling arches, 
ruined cloisters, and mullioned windows, man- 
tled with masses of ivy and bloom and set in the 
scene of restful beauty which Turner painted 
and Rogers and Wordsworth poetized. Our 
pleasure in the ruin and its environment of wood, 
mead, and stream is enhanced by the companion- 
ship of one who had, on another summer's day, 
explored the charms of the spot with George 
Eliot, and who repeats to us her expressions of 
rapturous delight at each new vista. Words- 
worth loved this spot, and the incident to which 
the Abbey owed its erection — the drowning of 
young Romilly, the noble " Boy of Egremond," 
in the gorge near by — is beautifully told by him 
in the familiar poems written here. 

Another excursion, by Knaresborough and 
the deadly field of Marston Moor, brings us into 
lovely Nidderdale, where stalks the dus&y ghost 
143 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

of the Eugene Aram of Bulwer's tale and Hood's 
poem amid the scenes of his early life and of 
the crime for which he died. In the upper 
portion of the valley the Nidd winds like a 
ribbon of silver between green braes and moor- 
land hills which rise steeply to the narrow 
horizon. From either side brooklets flow 
through wooded glens to join the wimpling 
Nidd, and at the mouth of one of these we find 
Ramsgill, where Aram was born. It is a strag- 
gling hamlet of thatched cottages, set among 
bowering orchards and gardens and wearing an 
aspect of tranquil comfort. The site of the 
laborer's hut in which the gentle student was 
born is shown at the back of one of the newer 
cottages of the place. Farther up the picturesque 
stream is the pretty village of Lofthouse, an 
assemblage of gray stone houses nestled beneath 
clustering trees, to which Aram returned after a 
short residence at Skipton, in the dale of the 
Brontes. Here he wooed sweet Annie Spence 
and passed his early years of married life ; here 
his first children were born and one of them 
died. At the church in near-by Middlesmoor 
he was married ; here his first child was chris- 
tened, and in the bleak church-yard it was buried. 
Near a sombre "gill" which opens into the 
valley some distance below was Gowthwaite 
Hall, where Aram taught his first pupils, — an 



Aram's Schools — Place of Murder 

ancient, rambling structure of stone, two stories 
in height, with many steep gables and wide 
latticed windows. Venerable trees shaded the 
walls, leafy vines climbed to and overran the 
roofs, and a quaint garden of prim squares and 
formally trimmed foliage lay at one side. We 
found these externals little changed since Aram 
was tutor here. The partition of the mansion 
into three tenements had altered the arrange- 
ment of the interior, but the wide stairway still 
led from the entrance to the upper room at the 
east end, where Aram taught : it was a large, 
lofty apartment, reputed to be haunted, changed 
since his time only by the closing of one case- 
ment. Richard Craven was then tenant of the 
Hall, and his son, the erudite doctor, doubtless 
received his first tuition in this room and from 
Aram. 

Some miles down the valley is Knaresborough 
to which Aram removed from Lofthouse to estab- 
lish a school, and where eleven years later the 
murder was committed. Soon after, Aram re- 
moved from the neighborhood, and during his 
residence at Lynn, where he was arrested for 
the crime, he was some time tutor in the house 
of Bulwer's grandfather, a circumstance which 
led to the production of the fascinating tale. A 
little way out of Knaresborough, in a recess at the 
base of the limestone cliffs which here border 
K 145 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

the murmuring Nidd, is the place where Clarke 
was killed and buried. This impressive spot 
was long the hermitage of " Sir Robert," who 
formed the cave out of the crag. In clearing 
the rubbish from the place after the publication 
of Bulwer's tale, the remains of a little shrine 
were found, and a coffin hewn from the rock, 
which proved that the hermitage had before 
been a place of burial, as urged by Aram in his 
defence. Upon a hill of the forest not far away 
the body of Aram hung in irons, and local 
tradition avers that his widow watched to recover 
the bones as they fell, and when she had at last 
interred them all, emigrated with her children 
to America. 

It is noteworthy that belief in his innocence 
was universal among those who knew him in this 
countryside. Incidents illustrating his self- 
denial, patient forbearance, disregard for money, 
and care to preserve even the lowest forms 
of life are still cherished and recounted here as 
showing that robbery and murder were for 
him impossible crimes. We were reminded, too, 
that at the time of Clarke's disappearance 
Aram was husband of a woman of his own 
station, father of a family, and master of a 
moderately prosperous school, — conditions of 
which Bulwer could scarcely have been unaware, 
and which are inconsistent with the only motives 
146 



Belief in Aram's Innocence 

suggested as inciting Aram to crime. In the 
opinion of the descendants of Aram's old neigh- 
bors in his native Nidderdale, Houseman was 
alone guilty ; and if Aram had, instead of under- 
taking to conduct his own defence, intrusted it to 
proper counsel, the trial would have resulted in 
his acquittal. 



'47 



HOME OF SYDNEY SMITH 



Heslington—Foston y Twelve Miles from a Lemon-Church— 
Rector* i Head - Study — Room-of-all-tvork — Grounds- 
Guests- Universal Scratcher- Immortal Chariot-Reminis- 
cences. 

' I *HE metropolis of England holds many- 
places which knew " the greatest of the 
many Smiths :" dwellings he some time inhabited, 
mansions in which he was the honored guest, 
pulpits and rostrums from which he discoursed, 
the room in which he died, the tomb where 
loving hands laid him beside his son. But it is 
in a remote valley of Yorkshire, where half his 
adult years were passed in a lonely retreat among 
the humble poor, that we find the scenes most 
intimately associated with the fruitful period of 
his life. In the lovely dale of York, not far 
from one of the ancient gates and within sound 
of the bells of the great minster, is the village 
of Heslington, Smith's first place of abode in 
Yorkshire. His dwelling here — lately the 
rectory of a parish which has been created since 
his time, and one of the best houses of the village 
— is a spacious and substantial old-fashioned 
mansion of brick, two stories in height and 
delightfully cosy in appearance. Large bow- 
windows, built by Smith, project from the front 
and rise to the eaves. The rooms are of com- 
148 



Heslington — Foston-le-Clay 

fortable dimensions, and that in which Smith 
wrote is " glorified" by the sunlight from one 
of his great windows, near which his writing- 
table was placed. The house stands a rod or 
two from the highway, amid a mass of foliage ; 
an iron railing borders the yard, trees grow upon 
either side, and at the back is an ample garden 
which was Smith's especial delight, and which 
he paced for hours as he pondered his composi- 
tions. It was here that the dignified Jeffrey of 
the Edinburgh Review rode the children's pet 
donkey over the grass. Smith's famous " Peter 
Plimley" letters were produced at Heslington. 
He never felt at home here, because he constantly 
contemplated removing. His own parish had 
no rectory, and he was permitted by his bishop 
to reside here while he sought to exchange the 
living for another : failing in this, he was allowed 
a further term in which to erect a dwelling in 
his parish, consequently Heslington was his 
home for some years. During this time he 
made weekly excursions to his church, twelve 
miles distant, behind a steed which he commem- 
orates as Peter the Cruel, and in the year he 
built his parsonage the excursions were so 
frequent that he computed he had ridden Peter 
"several times round the world, going and 
coming from Heslington." 

In the remoter hamlet of Foston, "twelve 
149 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

miles from a lemon," we find the church where 
he ministered for twenty years and the house 
which was his home longer than any other. 
Our way thither — the same once so familiar to 
Smith and his cruel steed — lies along the green 
valley through which the wimpling Foss ripples 
and sings on its way to the Ouse. In sun and 
shadow our road leads through a pleasant country 
until we see the roofs of Smith's parsonage 
rising among the tree-tops. The Rector's Head, 
as the wit delighted to call his home, stands 
among the glebe-lands at a little distance from 
the highway, and a carriage-drive — constructed 
by Smith after some of his guests had been 
almost inextricably mired in their attempts to 
reach his door — conducts from a road-side gate 
near the school through the tasteful and well- 
kept grounds. Before we reach the rectory a 
second barrier is encountered, Smith's " Screech- 
ing Gate," which, like the gate at "Amen 
Corner," remains just as it was when he be- 
stowed its name. The mansion, of which he 
was both architect and builder, described by him 
and his friend Loch as " the ugliest house ever 
seen," presents a singularly attractive aspect of 
cosiness and comfort. The edifice is somewhat 
improved since the great essayist dwelt beneath 
its roof, but the original structure remains, — an 
oblong brick fabric, of ample proportions and 
150 



Smith's Parsonage 

unpretentious architecture, two stories in height, 
with hip-roofs of warm-tinted tiles. A large 
bay-window struts from one side wall ; a beauti- 
ful conservatory abuts upon another side; a 
little porch, overgrown with creepers and 
flowers, protects the entrance. The once plain 
brickwork, which rose bare of ornamentation, is 
mantled with ivy and flowering vines which 
clamber to the roofs and riot along the walls, 
imparting to the "unparsonic parsonage" a 
picturesque charm which no architectural decora- 
tion could produce. The bare field in which 
Smith erected his house has been transformed 
into an Eden of beauty and bloom ; on every 
side are velvety lawns, curving walks, beds of 
flowers, patches of shrubbery, and groups of 
woodland trees, forming a pretty park, mostly 
planned by Smith and planted by his hand. 
Within, we find the apartments spacious and 
cheerful : the windows are the same that were 
screened by the many-hued patchwork shades 
designed by Smith and wrought by the deft fin- 
gers of his daughters, the chimney-pieces of 
Portland stone which he erected remain, but 
tasteful and elegant furniture now replaces the 
rude handiwork of the village carpenter, which 
was disposed through these rooms during Smith's 
incumbency. He blithely tells a guest, "I 
needed furniture ; I bought a cart-load of boards 
151 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

and got the carpenter, Jack Robinson ; told him, 
* Jack, furnish my house,' and you see the result." 
Some of the resulting furniture is still preserved 
in the neighborhood and valued above price. 
From the bay-window of the parlor the gray 
towers of York's colossal cathedral are seen ten 
miles away ; the room adjoining at the left is the 
memorable apartment which was Smith's study, 
school-room, court, surgery, and what-not. Here 
his gayly-bound books were arranged by his 
daughter, the future Lady Holland, and here, 
when not applied to him, his famous " rheumatic 
armor" stood in a bag in yonder corner. Here 
he wrote his sermons, his brilliant and witty 
essays, the wise and effective disquisitions on 
the disabilities of the Catholics, the coruscating 
and incisive articles for the Review which elec- 
trified the English world. In this room he 
taught his children and gave Bible lessons to the 
youth of the parish, some of whom survive to 
praise and bless him ; here, too, he prescribed for 
the sick and dispensed mercy rather than justice 
to culprits haled before him ; for, as his letters 
declare, he was at once " village magistrate, vil- 
lage parson, village doctor, village comforter, and 
Edinburgh Reviewer." To these manifold 
avocations he added, despite his " not knowing 
a turnip from a carrot," that of the farmer, and 
managed the three hundred acres of glebe-lands 
152 



Fields and Farmsteading 

which were so unproductive that no one else 
would cultivate them. A door-way of the rectory- 
overlooks most of the plantation, and he sus- 
pended here a telescope and a tremendous speak- 
ing-trumpet by means of which he could ob- 
serve and direct much of his operations without 
himself going afield. Behind the house, and 
screened by trees which Smith planted, are the 
farmstead buildings he planned ; here are the 
stables and pens where he was welcomed by 
every individual of his stock, whom he daily 
visited to feed and pet ; here is the enclosure 
where he found his fuddled pigs " grunting God 
save the King about the sty" after he had admin- 
istered a medicament of fermented grains. In 
the adjoining field is the site of his " Universal 
Scratcher," — a sharp-edged pole having a tall 
support at one extremity and a low one at the 
other, which so adapted it to the height of every 
animal that " they could scratch themselves with 
the greatest facility and luxury ; even the 
• Reviewer* [himself] could take his turn." 

Of Smith's life in this retirement his many 
letters and the memoirs of his daughter give us 
pleasant pictures. Although he said his whole 
life had " been passed like a razor, in hot water 
or a scrape," the years spent here seem to have 
been happy ones. Even his removal to this 
house while it was yet so damp that the walls 
»53 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

ran down with wet and the grounds were so 
miry that his wife lost her shoes at the door, 
was made enjoyable. He writes to one friend, 
" I am too busy to be lonely ;" to another, " I 
thank God who made me poor that he also 
made me merry, a better gift than much land with 
a doleful heart ;" to another, "I am content 
and doubling in size every year ;" to Lady Grey, 
" Come and see how happy people can be in a 
small parsonage ;" to Jeffrey, " My situation is 
one of great solitude, but I possess myself in 
cheerfulness. " He had expended upon his im- 
provements here more than the living was worth, 
therefore economy ruled the selection of the 
personnel of this establishment. Faithful Annie 
Kay was first employed as child's-maid ; later she 
was housekeeper and trusted friend, removed 
from here with her loved master, attended him 
in his last illness, and lies near him in the long 
sleep. A garden girl, made like a mile-stone, 
was hired by Smith, who " christened her Bunch, 
gave her a napkin, and made her his butler." 
Jack Robinson was retained as general factotum 
of the place, and Molly Mills, " a yeowoman, 
with short petticoat, legs like mill-posts, and 
cheeks shrivelled like winter apples," did duty as 
" cow-, pig-, poultry-, garden-, and post-woman." 
Guests testify that good-natured training had, 
out of this unpromising material, produced such 
i54 



Guests — Reminiscences 

efficient servants that the household ran smoothly 
in the stress of much company. For, despite the 
seclusion of Smith's retreat, his fame and the 
charm and wit of his conversation drew many 
visitors to his house. Lords Carlisle and Mor- 
peth were almost weekly guests ; Sir Humphry 
Davy and his gifted wife were many times guests 
for days together ; among those who came less 
frequently were Jeffrey, Macaulay, Marcet, 
Dugald Stewart, John Murray, Mackintosh, and 
Lord and Lady Holland, with many of less 
fame ; and we may imagine something of the 
scintillant converse these rooms knew when the 
master wit entertained such company. Neither 
his friends nor his literary pursuits were allowed 
to interfere with his attentions to the simple 
rustics of his parish ; in sickness and trouble he 
was tireless in their service, furnishing medicines, 
food, and clothing out of his slender means. 
During the prevalence of an infectious fever he 
was constantly among them, as physician, nurse, 
and priest. The oldest parishioners speak of him 
by his Christian name, and testify that he was 
universally beloved. One lately remembered 
that Sydney had cared for his father during a 
long illness and maintained the family until he 
could return to his work. Another had been 
accustomed, as a child, to run after Sydney on 
the highway and cling to him until he bestowed 
i55 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

the sugar-plums he always carried in his pockets. 
In one portion of the glebe we found small 
enclosures of land stocked with abundant fruit- 
trees and called Sydney's Orchards, which were 
planted by him and given to the parishioners at 
a nominal rental. 

Smith's solitary excursions through the parish 
were made astride a gaunt charger, called by him 
Calamity, noted for length of limb and strength 
of appetite, as well as for a propensity to part 
company with his rider, sometimes throwing the 
great Smith " over his head into the next parish." 
But when the rector's family were to accom- 
pany him, the ancient green chariot was 
employed. This was believed to have been the 
first vehicle of the kind, was purchased by Smith 
at second (or twenty-second) hand, and was from 
time to time partially restored by the unskilled 
village mechanics. Anent this structure the 
delightful Smith writes, " Each year added to its 
charms : it grew younger and younger : a new 
wheel, a new spring; I christened it the Im- 
mortal : it was known everywhere : the village 
boys cheered it, the village dogs barked at it.'* 
To the ends of the shafts Smith attached a rod 
so that it projected in front of the horse and 
sustained a measure of grain just beyond his 
reach, — a device which evoked a maximum of 
speed from the beast with the minimum of 
156 



The Chariot— Church 

exertion on the part of the driver, the deluded 
horse being '* stimulated to unwonted efforts by- 
hope of overtaking the provender." We have 
talked with some in the vicinage who remem- 
bered seeing Smith and his family riding in this 
perennial chariot, drawn by a plough-horse 
which was harnessed with plough-lines and 
driven by a plough-boy. 

A mile from the rectory, past the few strag- 
gling cottages of the hamlet, we come to the 
quaint little church of Foston, one of the oldest 
in England. It was already in existence in 1081 
when Doomsday Book was compiled, being then 
the property of Earl Allen : later it was con- 
veyed to St. Mary's Abbey, whose ruins — mar- 
vellously beautiful even in decay — we find at the 
gates of York. It is noteworthy that this church 
of Foston early contained an image of the Virgin 
of such repute that people flocked to it in great 
numbers, and in 13 13 the archbishop issued an 
edict that they should not desert their own 
churches to come here. Smith's church is 
prettily placed upon a gentle eminence from 
which we look across a wave-like expanse of 
smiling fields to steeper slopes beyond, a picture 
of pastoral peace and calm. Beneath the many 
mouldering heaps of the church-yard sleep the 
rustic poor for whom Smith labored, many of 
them having been committed to their narrow 
157 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

cells, " in the certain hope of the life to come," 
by his kindly hands. Among the graves stands 
the old church, the plainest and smallest of its 
kind. The present venerable and reverend in- 
cumbent, to whom we are indebted for many 
courtesies, has at his own expense restored the 
chancel as a memorial of his wife, but the 
principal portion of the edifice remains the same 
" miserable hovel" that Macaulay described in 
Smiths day. A heavy porch shelters the en- 
trance, and above this is a sculptured Norman 
arch of great antiquity, a Scripture subject being 
graven upon each stone, that upon the key-block 
representing the Last Supper. The bare walls 
are surmounted by a dilapidated belfry, and the 
barn-like edifice is desolate and neglected. We 
find the interior dismal and depressive, and quite 
unchanged since Smith's time, save that the stove- 
pipe now enters a flue instead of emerging 
through a window. The quaint old pulpit, 
perched high in the corner opposite the gallery 
and beneath a huge sounding-board, is the same 
in which he so often stood ; its frayed and faded 
cushions are said to be those that he belabored 
in his discourses, and out of which, on one 
occasion, he raised such a cloud of dust " that 
for some minutes he lost sight of the congrega- 
tion." The pewter communion plate he used 
is preserved in a recess of the wall. Across the 
158 



Smith's Church 

end and along one side of the church extends a 
gallery, in which sat the children under Smith's 
sharp eye, and kept in order, as some remember, 
by " a threaten-shake of his head." Along the 
front of this gallery ugly wooden pegs are aligned, 
on which the occupants of the pews hang their 
wraps, and so diminutive is the place that there 
are but four pews between door and pulpit. 
The present rector, whose father owned most 
of the parish and was Smith's firm friend, at- 
tended as a boy Smith's ministrations here, and 
remembers something of the direct eloquence 
of his sermons and their impressive effect upon 
the auditors. Attracted by his fame, some came 
from far to hear him preach who afterward 
became his ardent friends, among these being 
Macaulay and the Mrs. Apreece whom de Stael 
depicted as " Corinne" and who subsequently, 
as wife of Humphry Davy, was guest at The 
Rector's Head. In this shabby little church 
Smith gave away his daughter Emily, the Arch- 
bishop of York reading the marriage service ; 
and not long after Smith removed to Somerset, 
and Foston saw him no more. 

The church contains no memorial of any sort 
in memory of Smith. The decayed condition 
of this temple has long been a reproach to the 
resident gentry. Since those whose property 
interests are most concerned in the restoration 
'59 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

of the church have declined to enter upon it, 
the good rector contemplates undertaking it at 
his own charge. Not long ago he was engaged 
upon the plans, and it may be that, by the time 
these pages reach the reader, Foston church as 
Smith knew it will have ceased to exist. The 
writer has a lively hope that some of the New 
World pilgrims who have marked other Old 
World shrines which else had been neglected, 
will set in these renovated walls an enduring 
memorial — of pictured glass or sculptured stone 
or graven metal — in remembrance of the illus- 
trious author-divine who, during his best years, 
ministered in this lowly place to a congregation 
of rude and unlettered poor. 



:6o 



NITHSDALE RAMBLES 



Scott — Hogg — Wordsworth — CarlyW s Birthplace - Homes — 
Grave— Burns' s Haunts-Tomb- J eanie Deans— Old Mor- 
tality, etc.-Annie Laurie's Birthplace-Habitation-Poet- 
Lover-Descendants. 

"C^ROM the " Heart of Mid-Lothian" and the 
■"■ many shrines of picturesque Edinburgh, 
once the literary capital of Britain, our saunter- 
ings bring us to other haunts of the " Wizard 
of the North :" to his oft described Abbotsford, 
— that baronial " romance in stone and lime," — 
with its libraries and armories, its precious 
relics and more precious memories of its illus- 
trious builder and occupant, who here literally 
" wrote himself to death ;" to the dream-like, 
ivy-grown ruins of holy Melrose, whose beauties 
he sang and within whose crumbling walls he 
lingered and mused ; to his tomb fittingly placed 
amid the ruined arches and mouldering pillars 
of Dryburgh Abbey, embowered by venerable 
trees and mantled by clinging vines. Strolling 
thence among the " Braes of Yarrow," the Yar- 
row of Wordsworth and Hamilton, through the 
haunts of Hogg the Ettrick Shepherd, and pass- 
ing the Hartfell, we come into the dale of 
Annan, and follow that winsome water past 
Moffat, where lived Burns's daughter, to historic 
Applegarth, and thence by Lockerby approach 
l 161 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

Ecclefechan, the hamlet of Carlyle's birth and 
sepulture. Among the lowly stone cottages on 
the straggling street of the rude village is a 
double dwelling with an arched passage-way 
through the middle of its lower story ; this 
humble structure was erected by the stone- 
mason James Carlyle, and the northern end of it 
was his home when his illustrious son was born. 
Opening from the street is a narrow door ; beside 
it is a diminutive window, with a similar one 
above and another over the arch. The exterior 
is now smartened somewhat, — the shillings of 
pilgrims would pay for that, — but the abode is 
pathetically small, bare, and poor. The one 
lower room is so contracted that the Carlyles 
could not all sit at the table, and Thomas used 
to eat his porridge outside the door. Some 
Carlyle relics from Cheyne Row — letters, por- 
traits, pieces of china, study-lamp, tea-caddy, 
and other articles — are preserved in the room 
above, and adjoining it is the narrow chamber 
above the archway where the great historian, 
essayist, and cynic was born. In this comfort- 
less home, and amid the dreary surroundings of 
this hard and rough village, which is little im- 
proved since the days of border war and pillage, 
he was reared. The stern savagery of the 
physical horizon of his boyhood here, and the 
hateful and uncongenial character of his environ- 
162 



Carlyle's Birthplace — Grave 

ment at the most impressionable period of his 
life, may account to us for much of the morose 
cynicism of his later years. Further excuse for 
his petulance and his acerbities of tongue and 
temper is found in his dyspepsia, and a very 
limited experience of Ecclefechan cookery suf- 
fices to convince us that his indigestion was 
another unhappy sequence of his early life in 
this border hamlet. In " Sartor Resartus" he 
has vivaciously recorded some of the incidents 
and impressions of his childhood here, — notably 
the passage of the Carlisle coach, like " some 
terrestrial moon, coming from he knew not 
where, going he knew not whither." A shabby 
cross-street leads to the village graveyard, 
which was old a thousand years ago, and there, 
within a few rods of the spot of his birth, the 
great Carlyle is forever laid, with his parents 
and kindred. The yard is a forlorn enclosure, 
huddled with hundreds of unmarked graves, and 
with other hundreds of crumbling memorials 
drooping aslant among the brambles which infest 
the place. The tombstone of Carlyle, within 
an iron railing, is a little more pretentious 
than those about it, but his grave seems 
neglected ; daisies and coarse grass grow about 
it, and the only tokens of reverent memory 
it bears are placed by Americans, who constitute 
the majority of the pilgrims to this place. Not 
163 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

far from the kirk-yard is a lowly cottage, hardly 
better than a hut, in which dwelt Burns's " Lass 
of Ecclefechan." 

By a transverse road from Lockerby we come 
to the ruined Lochmaben Castle of Bruce, and 
thence into Nithsdale and to Dumfries, the 
ancient capital of southwestern Scotland. Here 
lived Edward Irving, and here Allan Cunning- 
ham toiled as a common mason ; but the gray 
town is interesting to us chiefly because of its 
associations with Burns. Here are the tavern, 
familiar to us as the " howfF," which he fre- 
quented, and where he made love to the bar- 
maid, " Anna of the Gowden Locks ;" the 
parlor where his wit kept the table in a roar ; 
the heavy chair in the " ingle neuk" where he 
habitually sat, and, in the room above, the lines 
to " Lovely Polly Stewart" graven by his hand 
upon the pane. From the inn a malodorous 
lane, named Burns Street, and oft threaded by 
the bard when he " wasna fou but just had 
plenty," leads to the poor dwelling where lived 
and died the poet of his country and of mankind. 
An environment more repulsive and depressing, 
a spot more unworthy to be the home of a poet 
of nature, can scarcely be imagined. Here not 
a flower nor a green bough, not even a grass- 
blade, met his vision, not one beautiful object 
appeased his poetic taste ; he saw only the 
164 



Dumfries — Burns's Dwelling — Tomb 

squalid street infested by unwashed bairns and 
bordered by rows of mean cottages. How shall 
we extol the genius which in such an uncon- 
genial atmosphere produced those exquisite 
poems which for a century have been read and 
loved in every clime ? His own dwelling, a 
bare two-storied cottage, is hardly more decent 
than its neighbors. Within, we find a kitchen 
and sitting-room, small and low-ceiled ; above, a 
windowed closet, — sometimes used by the poet 
as a study, — and the poor little chamber where 
he died, only thirty-seven years after he first 
saw the light in the clay biggin by his bonnie 
Doon. 

The interior of St. Michael's Church has 
been refitted, and the sacristan can show us now 
only the site of Burns's seat, behind a great 
pillar which hid him from the preacher, and 
that of the Jenny on whose bonnet he saw the 
" crowlin' " pediculus. Through the crowded 
church-yard a path beaten by countless pilgrims 
from every quarter of the globe conducts to the 
place where he lies with " Bonnie Jean" and 
some of their children. The costly mausoleum 
which now covers his tomb — erected by those 
who had neglected or shunned him in his life — 
is to us less impressive than the poor little grave- 
stone which the faithful Jean first placed above 
him, which now forms part of the pavement. 
i6 S 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

The ambitious statue, designed to represent 
Genius throwing her mantle over Burns at the 
plough, suggests, as some one has said, that a 
bath-woman bringing a wet sheet to an unwill- 
ing patient had served as a model. Oddly- 
enough, the grave of John Bushby, an attorney 
oft lampooned in Burns's verse, lies but a few 
feet from that of the poet. 

Our ramble along the wimpling Nith lies for 
the most part in a second Burnsland, so closely 
is it associated with his personality and poetry. 
The beauties of the stream itself are celebrated 
in half a score of his songs. Every seat and 
scene are sung in his verse ; every neighborhood 
and almost every house preserve some priceless 
relic or some touching reminiscence of the 
ploughman-bard. A short way above Dumfries 
we come to the picturesque ruin of Lincluden 
Abbey, at the meeting of the waters of Cluden 
and Nith. The crumbling walls are enshrouded 
in ivy and surrounded by giant trees, among 
which Burns loved to loiter. His " Evening 
View" and "Vision" commemorate this ruin, 
and the poem " Lincluden" was written here. 
In a tasteful cottage not far from the Abbey 
sojourned the Mrs. Goldie who communicated 
to Scott the incidents which he wrought into 
his " Heart of Mid-Lothian," and it was in the 
little kitchen of this cottage that the lady talked 
1 66 



Jeanie Deans — Carlyle's Craigenputtock 

with Helen Walker, the original Jeanie Deans. 
In a poor little low-eaved dwelling, a mile or 
two up the valley, that heroine lived, keeping a 
dame's school and rearing chickens ; and our 
course along the tuneful stream brings us to the 
ancient and sequestered kirk-yard of Irongray, 
where, among the grass-grown graves of the 
Covenanters, her ashes repose beneath a tomb- 
stone erected by Scott himself and marked by 
an inscription from his hand : " Respect the 
Grave of Poverty when associated with love of 
Truth and dear Affection." Farther in this 
lovely region we come to ancient Dunscore and 
the monument of Scott's " Old Mortality ;" and 
beyond Moniaive we find, near the source of 
the Cairn, Craigenputtock — the abode where 
" Thomas the Thunderer prepared his bolts" 
before he removed to London. This dreary 
place, " the loneliest in Britain," had been the 
abode of many generations of Mrs. Carlyle's 
ancestors, — among whom were " several black- 
guards but not one blockhead," — and Carlyle 
built and furnished the house here to which he 
brought the bride he had wedded after his re- 
pulsion by sweet Kitty Kirkpatrick, the Blumine 
of his " Romance." It is a severely plain and 
substantial two-storied structure of stone with 
steep gables. The entrance is under a little 
porch in the middle of the front ; on either side 
167 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

is a single window, with another above it in the 
second story. There are comfortable and com- 
modious rooms at each side of the entrance, and 
a large kitchen is joined at the back. Carlyle's 
study, a rather sombre apartment, with a dispirit- 
ing outlook, is at the left ; a fireplace which the 
sage especially loved is in one wall, his writing- 
table stood near it, and here he sat and clothed 
in virile diction the brilliant thoughts which had 
come to him as he paced among his trees or 
loitered on the near hill-tops. The dining-room 
and parlor are on the other side, looking out 
upon wild and gloomy crags. Mrs. Carlyle's 
pen long ago introduced us to this interior, and, 
although all her furniture, except perhaps the 
kitchen " dresser," has been removed, we recog- 
nize the household nooks she has mentioned. 
The kitchen, which was the scene of her tear- 
ful housekeeping trials, seems most familiar; 
its chimney retains its abominable habits, but 
a recent incumbent, instead of crying as did 
Mrs. Carlyle, declared the " chimla made her 
feel like sweerin\" Great ash-trees, which were 
old when the sage dwelt beneath them, overtop the 
house ; many beautiful flowers — some survivors of 
those planted by Carlyle and his wife — bloom in 
the yard. In front a wide field slopes away to 
a tributary of the Cairn, but sombre moorland 
hills rise at the back and cluster close about the 
1 68 



Carlyle's Craigenputtock 

house on either side, imparting to the place an 
indescribably depressing aspect : as we contem- 
plate the desolate savagery of this wilderness, 
we can understand why one of Carlyle's prede- 
cessors here killed himself and others " took to 
drink." 

The bare summit behind the house overlooks 
Carlyle's estate of a thousand acres and, beyond 
it, an expanse of bleak hills and black morasses. 
From the craggy brow on the left, the spot 
where Carlyle and Emerson sat and talked of the 
immortality of the soul, we see Dunscore and a 
superb vista of the valley towards Dumfries and 
the Wordsworth country. The isolation of this 
place — so complete that at one time not even a 
beggar came here for three months — was an 
advantage to Carlyle at this period. He speaks 
of it as a place of plain living and high 
thinking : life here appeared to him " an hum- 
ble russet-coated epic," and long afterward he 
referred to the years of their stay in this waste 
as being " perhaps the happiest of their lives." 
This expresses his own feeling rather than that 
of his wife, whose discontent finds expression in 
many ways, notably in her poem " To a 
Swallow." Carlyle produced here some of his 
best work, including the matchless " Sartor 
Resartus," the essay on Burns, and several 
scintillant articles for the various reviews which 
169 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

denoted the rise of a new star of genius ; but 
the period of his stay here was essentially one 
of study and thought, and, plenteous as it was in 
production, it was more prolific in preparation 
for the great work he had to do. To Carlyle 
in this solitude Jeffrey was a visitor, as well as 
" Christopher North," Hazlitt, and Edward 
Irving: hither, "like an angel from heaven," 
came Emerson to greet the new genius on the 
threshold of its career and to enjoy the " quiet 
night of clear, fine talk." Carlyle bequeathed 
this estate to the University of Edinburgh. 

Another day, our ramble follows the wind- 
ing Nith northward from Lincluden. As we 
proceed, the lovely and opulent dale, once the 
scene of clannish strife, presents an appearance 
of peaceful beauty, pervaded everywhere with 
the sentiment of Burns. In one enchanting 
spot the stream circles about the grounds of 
ancient Friars Carse, now a tasteful and pretty 
seat. It was erstwhile the residence of Burns's 
friend Riddel, to which the poet was warmly 
welcomed : here he composed the poem " Thou 
whom Chance may hither lead," and here he 
presided at the famous drinking-match which he 
told to future ages in " The Whistle." It is 
noteworthy that the first Scotch winner of the 
Whistle was father of Annie Laurie of the popu- 
lar song, and that the contest here was between 
170 









Friars Carse — Burns's Ellisland 

two of her grandnephews and her grandson, — 
the latter being victorious. Burns celebrated 
his friend of this old hermitage in seven of his 
poems ; and the present proprietor carefully 
cherishes the window upon whose pane the 
bard inscribed " Lines written in Friars Carse." 
A little way beyond lies Druidical Holywood, 
where once dwelt the author of " De Sphzera," 
and next we find the Nith curving among the 
acres which Burns tilled in his happiest years, 
at Ellisland. Embowered in roses and perched 
upon an eminence overhanging the stream is the 
plain little dwelling which he erected with his 
own hands for the reception of his bonnie Jean. 
It is little changed since the time he lived under 
its lowly roof. We think the rooms dingy and 
bare, but they are better than those of his abode 
at Alloway and Mossgiel, much better than those 
in which he died at Dumfries. In the largest 
of the apartments, by a window which looks 
down the dreamful valley, Burns had a rude 
table, and here he penned some of the most 
touchingly beautiful poetry of our language, — 
poems which he had pondered as he worked or 
walked afield. Adjoining the house is the yard 
where he produced the exquisite lines " To 
Mary in Heaven ;" in this near-by field he met 
" The Wounded Hare" of his verse ; in yonder 
path along the murmuring Nith he composed the 
171 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

immortal " Tarn O'Shanter," laughing aloud the 
while at the pictures his fancy conjured ; and all 
about us are reminders of the bard and of the 
idyllic life which here inspired his muse : it 
would repay a longer journey to see the spot 
where the one song "John Anderson, my Jo" 
was pondered and written. 

A further jaunt amid varied beauties of wood- 
land shade and meadow sunshine, of gentle dale 
and savage scaur, brings us past historic Close- 
burn to the neighborhood of Thornhill. Here 
at the Buccleuch Arms the illegitimate daughter 
of Burns was for thirty years a servant, and 
boasted of having had a chat with Scott among 
the burnished utensils of her kitchen. Two 
miles eastward Scott found the Balfour's Cave 
and Leap described in " Old Mortality." In 
the vicinage of Thornhill, Nithsdale expands into 
a broad champaign, begirt by rugged hills and 
diversified with upland brae, shadowy copse, 
sunny mead, and opulent plantation. This lovely 
region, dotted with pretty hamlets, embowered 
villas, and moss-grown ruins, and teeming with 
the charming associations of history and senti- 
ment, holds for us a crowning interest which 
has drawn our steps into its romantic haunts : it 
was the birthplace and life-long home of Annie 
Laurie. On the right of the Nith, among the 
bonnie braes of the song, we find the ancient 
172 



Annie Laurie — Early Home 

manor-house of Maxwelton, where the heroine 
was born. The first of her race to reside here 
was her great-grandfather, who in 1611 built 
additions to the old tower already existing. 
The marriage-stone of Annie Laurie's grand- 
parents, John Laurie and Agnes Grierson, is 
set in the massive walls and graven with their 
initials, crest, and date. This Agnes was 
daughter of the bloody persecutor who figures in 
" Redgauntlet," and whose ashes lie in Dunscore 
kirk-yard, not far distant. Another stone in the 
Maxwelton house commemorates the marriage 
of Robert Laurie and Jean Riddel, the parents 
of the heroine of the song, — this Robert being 
the champion of Bacchus who won the Whistle 
from the noble Danish toper. In this ancient 
abode, according to a record made by her father, 
"At the pleasure of the Almighty God, my 
daughter Anna Laurie was born upon the 16th 
day of Deer., 1682 years, about six o'clock 
in the morning ;" here the bonnie maiden grew 
to womanhood ; here occurred the episode to 
which the world is indebted for the sweet song ; 
from here she married and went to her future 
home, but a few miles away. In the last cen- 
tury much of the venerable edifice was destroyed, 
but the older portion, which had been part of a 
stronghold in the time of the border wars, remains 
intact since Annie dwelt within. This part is 
173 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

still called The Tower, and consists of a large 
rectangular structure, with a ponderous semi- 
circular fabric abutting it at one end, its fortress- 
like walls being five feet in thickness and clothed 
by a luxuriant growth of ivy. Newer portions 
have been added in varying styles, and the man- 
sion is now an elegant and substantial seat. All 
about it lie terraced lawns, with parterres of 
flowers, noble trees, and banks of shrubbery : 
lovely grounds slope away from the house and 
command an enchanting view which must often 
have delighted the vision of the fair Annie. 
Her boudoir is in the second story of The 
Tower ; it is a corner room, forming now an 
alcove of the drawing-room ; it has a vaulted 
ceiling of stone, and its windows, pierced in the 
ponderous walls, look out through the ivy and 
across an expanse of sward, flower, and foliage 
to the wooded braes where she kept tryst with 
her lover. Among the treasures of the old 
house is a portrait of the bonnie heroine which 
shows her as an impressively beautiful woman, 
of lissome figure, large and tender eyes, long 
oval face with Grecian features, wide forehead 
framed by a profusion of dark-brown hair. Her 
hands, like her " fairy feet," were of exceptional 
smallness and beauty. The present owner of 
Maxwelton, to whom the writer is indebted for 
many courtesies, is Sir Emilius Laurie ; from 
i74 



Annie Laurie and her Lover 

him and from the lineal descendants of the 
widely-sung Annie who still inhabit Nithsdale 
are derived the materials for this account of that 
winsome lady. The lover who immortalized 
her was William Douglas of Fingland, and she 
requited him by breaking " her promise true" 
and marrying another man. Douglas is said to 
have been the hero of the song " Willie was a 
Wanton Wag ;" he was one of the best swords- 
men of his time, and his personal qualities 
gained him the patronage of the gueensberry 
family and secured him social advantages to which 
his lower rank and poverty constituted no claim. 
He and Annie met at an Edinburgh ball, and 
seem to have promptly become enamoured of each 
other. To separate them, Sir Robert quickly 
carried his family back to Nithsdale, but Douglas 
as quickly followed, and lurked in the vicinage 
for some months, clandestinely meeting his love 
among " Maxwelton's bonnie braes." Here the 
pair plighted troth, and when Douglas returned 
to Edinburgh, to assist in a projected Stuart up- 
rising, he took with him the promise which he 
celebrated in the tender melody. The song was 
published in an Edinburgh paper and attracted 
much notice. Douglas's devotion to the Jacob- 
ites cost him his sweetheart; his political in- 
trigues being suspected, he was forced to fly the 
country, and when, after some years passed in 
175 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

France, he secured pardon and returned, she 
was the wife of another. After giving "her 
promise true" to some other lovers, she married 
in 1709 Alexander Fergusson, a neighboring 
laird, who could not write poetry but had 
" muckle siller an* Ian' " and a genealogy as long 
as Leviticus. Douglas and Annie never met 
again, and she makes but a single reference to 
him in her letters : being told of his return, she 
wrote to her sister, Mrs. Riddel, grandmother 
of Burns's friend, " I trust he has forsaken his 
treasonable opinions and is content." 

A stroll of but a few miles along the songful 
stream brings us by the palace of " bold Buc- 
cleuch" to Craigdarrock, Annie Laurie's home 
for more than half a century. It is a spacious 
and handsome edifice of three stories, with dor- 
mer-windows in the hip-roof; a conservatory is 
connected at one end, bow-windows project 
from either side, and clambering vines cover the 
walls of the lower stories. 

It is beautifully placed in a vale overlooking the 
winding stream, with the rugged Craigdarrock 
looming steeply in the background. Most of 
the mansion was built under the direction of 
Annie Laurie, and the gardens were laid out by 
her in their formal style : a delightful walk 
beneath the trees on the margin of the Nith was 
her favorite resort, and is still known by her 
176 



Her Later Home — Burial-place 

name. Within the spacious rooms are preserved 
many of her belongings : curious furniture and 
hangings, quaint fineries of dress, her porcelain 
snuff-box, her will, a package of her letters 
written in the prim fashion of her time and 
signed "Anna." Through these epistles we 
look in vain for indications of the wit and genius 
which one naturally attributes to the possessor 
of the bright face which inspired a deathless 
song. In this house she lived happily with her 
husband, and was at once the Lady Bountiful and 
the matchmaker-in-ordinary for the whole 
countryside ; here she died, aged seventy-nine. 
This estate has been handed down from father 
to son for fifteen generations, the present urbane 
laird, Captain Cutlar Fergusson, being a great- 
great-grandson of Annie Laurie and grandson 
of the hero of Burns's u Whistle." This famous 
trophy — a plain object in dark wood — is pre- 
served here at Craigdarrock, and has not been 
challenged for since the bout which Burns 
witnessed. 

In the now ruined church of Glencairn, 
hardly a mile from her birthplace, and not far 
from her later home, Annie Laurie worshipped, 
and in its yard, which has been a place of burial 
for a thousand years, she was laid with her hus- 
band, among the many generations of his kindred, 
by the gable-end of the ancient church. Her 

M 1?7 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

sepulchre was not marked, and it is to be feared 
the bones of the erst beauteous lady have been 
more than once disturbed in excavating for later 
interments in the crowded plot. From the 
summit of Craigdarrock we look upon the wilder 
beauty of the upper Nith, a region of moorland 
hills and dusky glens, where we may find the 
birthplace of " the Admirable Crichton," and 
beyond it the bleak domain where the poet 
Allan Ramsay first saw the light. Beyond this, 
again, the sweet Afton " flows amang its green 
braes," and we come to the Ayrshire shrines of 
Burns. 

A few miles westward from Craigdarrock, and 
not so far from Carlyle's lonely den, is Fingland 
farm, the birthplace and home of Annie's poet- 
lover. It lies among sterile hills in the wild 
Glenkens of ancient Galloway, near the source 
of Ken water. From neighboring elevations 
we see Craigenputtock and the swelling Sol- 
way, and westward we look, across the dark 
fens and heathery hills of the region " blest 
with the smell of bog-myrtle and peat," al- 
most to the Irish Sea. In this region Crockett 
was reared, and he pictures it in his charm- 
ing tales " The Raiders" and " The Lilac Sun- 
bonnet." 

No trace of the peel-tower in which Douglas 
dwelt remains, but we know that it stood within 
178 



Annie Laurie — The Singer and the Song 

an enclosing wall twenty yards square and one 
yard in thickness. The tower had projecting 
battlements ; its apartments, placed above each 
other, were reached by a narrow, easily defended 
stair. In such a home and amid this most dis- 
mal environment Douglas grew to manhood, his 
poetic power unsuspected until it was called 
forth by the love and beauty of Annie Laurie. 
Later he wrote many poems, but diligent inquiry 
among the families of Buccleuch and Queens- 
berry shows that few of his productions are now 
extant save the famous love-song. It is notable 
that he did not " lay doun his head and die" 
for the faithless Annie ; instead, he made a run- 
away marriage with Elizabeth Clerk, of Glen- 
borg, in his native Galloway, subsided into 
prosy country life, and reared a family of six 
children, of whom one, Archibald, rose to the 
rank of lieutenant-general in Brittany. 

Douglas's song was revised by Lady Scott, 
sister of the late Duke of Buccleuch, and pub- 
lished by her for the benefit of the widows and 
orphans made by the Crimean War. Lines of 
the original, for which the writer is indebted to 
a descendant of Annie Laurie, are hereto ap- 
pended, that the reader may appreciate how much 
of the tender beauty of the popular version of 
the song is attributable to the poetic talent of 
Lady Scott. 

179 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

" Maxwelton banks are bonnie, 

Where early fa's the dew, 
Where me and Annie Laurie 

Made up the promise true : 
Made up the promise true, 

And ne'er forget will I : 
And for bonnie Annie Laurie 

I'd lay doun my head and die. 

** She/s backit like a peacock j 

She's breastit like a swan j 
She's jimp about the middle; 

Her waist ye weel may span : 
Her waist ye weel may span, — 

She has a rolling eye j 
And for bonnie Annie Laurie 

I'd lay doun my head and die." 



1 80 



A NIECE OF ROBERT BURNS 



Her Burns/and Cottage-Reminiscences of Burns-Relics-Por- 
traits-Letters— Recitations-Account of his Death-Memo- 
ries of his Home-Of Bonnie yean-Other Heroines. 

TN the course of a summer ramble in Burns- 
land we had sought out the homes, the 
haunts, the tomb of the ploughman poet, and had 
bent at many a shrine hallowed by his memory 
or his song. From the cottage of ** Bonnie 
Jean" and the tomb of" Holy Willie," the field 
of the " Mountain Daisy" and the church of the 
"Holy Fair," the birthplace of "Highland 
Mary" and the grave of " Mary Morison," we 
came to the shrines of auld Ayr, beside the sea. 
Here we find the " Twa Brigs" of his poem ; the 
graves of the ministers satirized in " The Kirk's 
Alarm ;" the old inn of " Tarn O'Shanter," and 
the very room, with its ingle, where Tarn and 
Souter Johnny " got fou thegither," and where 
we may sip the nappy from the wooden caup 
which Tarn often drained. From Ayr a delight- 
ful stroll along the highway where Tarn made 
his memorable ride, and where William Burns 
carried the howdie upon the pillion behind him 
on another stormy winter's night when the poet 
was born, brought us to the hamlet of Alloway 
and the place of Burns's early life. Here are the 
auld clay biggin, with its rude stone floor and 
181 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

roof of thatch, erected by the unskilled hands 
of his father, where the poet first saw the light, 
and where he laid the scene of the immortal 
" Cotter's Saturday Night ;" the fields where 
his young hands toiled to aid his burdened sire ; 
the kirk-yard where his kindred lie buried, some 
of their epitaphs written by him ; the " auld 
haunted kirk," — where Tam interrupted the 
witches' dance, — unknown save for the genius of 
the lad born by its roofless walls ; the Burns 
monument, with its priceless relics ; the ivy- 
grown bridge, four centuries old, whose arch 
spans the songful stream and across which Tam 
galloped in such sore peril, and its " key-stane," 
where Meg lost " her ain gray tail" to Nannie, 
fleetest of the pursuers ; the enchanting " banks 
and braes of bonnie Doon," where Burns wan- 
dered a brown-eyed boy, and later found the in- 
spiration of many of his exquisite strains. We 
have known few scenes more lovely than this 
in which his young life was passed : long and 
delightful is our lingering here, for interwoven 
with the many natural beauties are winsome 
memories of the bard whose spirit and genius 
pervade all the scene. 

Returning thence past the " thorn aboon the 

well" (the well is closed now) and the " meikle- 

stane" to the ancient ford " where in the snaw 

the chapman smoor'd," we made a detour south- 

182 



Miss Burns Begg — Bridgeside Cot 

ward, and came by a pleasant way — having in 
view on the right the picturesque ruin of Greenan 
Castle upon a cliff overhanging the sea — to 
Bridgeside cottage, the home of Miss Isabella 
Burns Begg, niece of the poet and long his only 
surviving near relative. We found a cottage of 
stone, from whose thatched roof a dormer-win- 
dow, brilliant with flowers, peeped out through 
the foliage which half concealed the tiny home- 
let. The trimmest of little maids admitted us 
at the gate and led along a path bordered with 
flowers to the cottage door, where stood Miss 
Begg beaming a welcome upon the pilgrims 
from America. We were ushered into a pret- 
tily furnished little room, upon whose walls 
hung a portrait of Burns, one of his sister Mrs. 
Begg, and some framed autograph letters of the 
bard, which the niece " knew by heart." She 
was the daughter and namesake of Burns's young- 
est and favorite sister, who married John Begg. 
We found her a singularly active and vivacious 
old lady, cheery and intelligent, and more than 
pleased to have secured appreciative auditors for 
her reminiscences of her gifted uncle. She was 
of slender habit, had a bright and winning face, 
soft gray hair partially concealed by a cap, and 
when she was seated beneath the Burns por- 
trait we could see that her large dark eyes — 
now sparkling with merriment or misty with 
183 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

emotion, and again literally glowing with feeling 
— were like those on the canvas. Among the 
treasures of this room was a worn copy of 
Thomson's "Seasons," a favorite book of 
Burns, which he had freely annotated ; his 
name in it is written " Burnes," as the family 
spelled it down to the publication of the bard's 
first volume. In the course of a long and pleas- 
ant chat we learned that Miss Begg had lived 
many years in the cottage, first with her mother 
and later with her sister Agnes, — named for 
Burns's mother, — who died before our visit and 
was laid beside her parents and the father of 
Burns in the kirk-yard of auld Alloway, where 
Miss Begg expected " soom day, please God an 
it be soon," to go to await the resurrection, 
thinking it an u ill hap" that she survived her 
sister. She innocently inquired if we " kenned 
her nephew Robert in America," and then ex- 
plained that he and a niece of hers had formerly 
lived with her, but she had discovered that " they 
were sweetheartin* and wantin* to marry, which 
she wouldna allow, so they went to America," 
leaving her alone with her handmaiden. Most 
of her visitors had been Americans. She re- 
membered the visits of Hawthorne, Grant, Stan- 
ley, and Helen Hunt Jackson, — the last with 
greatest pleasure, — and thought that w Americans 
care most about Burns." She mentioned the visit 
184 



Recitations — Bonnie Jean 

of a Virginian maid, who by rapturous praise 
of the uncle completely won the heart of the 
niece. The fair enthusiast had most of Burns's 
poems at her tongue's end, but insisted upon 
having them repeated by Miss Begg, and at 
parting exclaimed, after much kissing, '* Oh, 
but I always pray God that when he takes me 
to heaven he will give me the place next to 
Burns." Apparently, Robin still has power to 
disturb the peace of " the lasses O." Yet we 
can well excuse the effusiveness of our com- 
patriot : to have listened to the old lady as she 
sat under his portrait, her eyes twinkling or 
softening like his own, her voice thrilling with 
sympathetic feeling as she repeated in his own 
sweet dialect the tender stanzas, " But pleasures 
are like poppies spread," " My Mary ! dear de- 
parted shade !" and " Oh, happy love, when 
love like this is found," and others of like pathos 
and beauty, is a rapture not to be forgotten. 
She spoke quickly, and the Scottish accent kept 
one's ears on the alert, but it rendered the lines 
doubly effective and melodious. Many of the 
poems were inspired by special events of which 
Miss Begg had knowledge from her mother, 
which she recalled with evident relish. She 
distinctly remembered the bard's widow, " Bon- 
nie Jean," and often visited her in the poor 
home where he died. Jean had a sunny tem- 
,85 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

per, a kind heart, a handsome figure, a fine voice, 
and lustrous eyes, but her brunette face was 
never bonnie. While she lacked intellectual 
appreciation of his genius, she was proud of and 
idolized him, finding ready excuse and forgive- 
ness for his failings. When the frail " Anna 
with the Gowden Locks" bore him an illegiti- 
mate child, Jean cradled it with her own, and 
loyally averred to all visitors, " It's only a nee- 
bor's bairn I'm bringin' up." (" Ay, she must 
V lo'ed him," was Miss Begg's comment on this 
part of her narrative.) Jean had told that in his 
last years the poet habitually wore a blue coat, 
with nankeen trousers (when the weather would 
allow), and his coat-collar was so high that 
his hat turned up at the back. Her account of 
the manner of his death is startling, and differs 
from that given by the biographers. He lay 
apparently asleep when " sweet Jessy" — to 
whom his last poem was written — approached, 
and, to remind him of his medicine, touched 
the cup to his lips ; he started, drained the cup, 
then sprang headlong to the foot of the bed, 
threw his hands forward like one about to swim, 
and, falling on his face, expired with a groan. 
Jean saw him for the last time on the evening 
before his funeral, when his wasted body lay in 
a cheap coffin covered with flowers, his care- 
worn face framed by the wavy masses of his 
186 



Reminiscences — Burns' Youth 

sable hair, then sprinkled with gray. At his 
death he left MSS. in the garret of his abode, 
which were scattered and lost because Jean was 
unable to take care of them, — a loss which must 
ever be deplored. 

One of the delights of Miss Begg's girlhood 
was the converse of Burns's mother concerning 
her first-born and favorite child, the poet, a 
theme of which she never tired. Miss Begg 
remembered her as a " chirk" old lady with 
snapping black eyes and an abundant stock of 
legends and ballads. She used to declare that 
Bobbie had often heard her sing " Auld Lang 
Syne" in his boyhood ; hence it would appear 
that, at most, he only revised that precious old 
song. Miss Begg more than once heard the 
mother tell, with manifest gusto, this incident 
of their residence at Lochlea. Robert was al- 
ready inclined to be wild, and between visiting 
his sweetheart Ellison Begbie — " the lass of 
the twa sparkling, roguish een" — and attend- 
ing the Tarbolton club and Masonic lodge was 
abroad until an unseemly hour every night, and 
his mother or Isabella sat up to let him in. His 
anxious sire, the priest-like father of the " Cot- 
ter's Saturday Night," determined to administer 
an effectual rebuke to the son's misconduct, and 
one night startled the mother by announcing 
significantly that he would wait to admit the 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

lad. She lay for hours (Robert was later than 
ever that night), dreading the encounter between 
the two, till she heard the boy whistling " Tib- 
bie Fowler" as he approached. Then the door 
opened : the father grimly demanded what had 
kept him so late; the son, for reply, gave a 
comical description of his meeting auld Hornie 
on the way home, — an adventure narrated in 
the "Address to the De'il," — and next the 
mother heard the pair seat themselves by the 
fire, where for two hours the father roared with 
laughter at Robert's ludicrous account of the 
evening's doings at the club, — she, meanwhile, 
nearly choking with her efforts to restrain the 
laughter which might remind her husband of his 
intended reproof. Thereafter the lad stayed out 
as late as he pleased without rebuke. The 
niece had been told by her mother that Burns 
was deeply distressed at his father's death-bed 
by the old man's fears for the future of his way- 
ward son ; and when his father's death made 
Robert the head of the family, he every morn- 
ing led the household in "the most beautiful 
prayers ever heard ;" later, at Ellisland and else- 
where, he continued this practice, and on the 
Sabbath instructed them in the Catechism and 
Confession. Mrs. Begg's most pleasing recol- 
lections of her brother were associated with the 
farm-life at Mossgiel, where he so far gave her 
■81 



Mossgiel — Recollections 

his confidence that she was allowed to see his 
poems in the course of their composition. He 
would ponder his stanzas during his labors 
afield, and when he came to the house for a 
meal he would go to the little garret where he 
and his brother Gilbert slept and hastily pen 
them upon a table which stood under the one 
little window. Here Isabella would find them, 
and, after repeated perusals, would arrange them 
in the drawer; and so it passed that her bright eyes 
were the first, besides his own, to see " The Twa 
Dogs," " Winter's Night," « The Bard's Epi- 
taph," "The Cotter's Saturday Night," the 
satirical poems, and most of the productions which 
were published in his Kilmarnock volume. His 
sister testified that he was always affectionate to 
the family, and that after his removal to a home 
of his own he invariably brought a present for 
each when he revisited the farm, the present for 
his mother being always, despite his poverty, a 
costly pound of tea. Most of the receipts from 
his publishers were given to the family at Moss- 
giel. Miss Begg intimated that Burns's mother 
did not at first like his wife, because of the cir- 
cumstances of the marriage, but Jean's stanch 
devotion to her husband won the heart of the 
doting mother, and they became warm friends 
and spent much time together after Burns's 
death. The niece believed that the accounts 
189 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

of his intemperance are mostly untrue. Her 
mother, who was twenty-five years old at the 
time of his decease, always asserted that she 
" never saw him fou," and believed it was his 
antagonism to the " unco* guid" that made them 
ready to believe and circulate any idle report to 
his discredit. 

Mrs. Begg saw and liked *« Highland Mary" 
at the house of Gavin Hamilton, and knew Miss 
Dunlop, the blooming Keith of Burns's " New- 
Year Day." Another of his heroines the niece 
had herself visited with her mother ; this was 
Mrs. Jessy Thompson, nee Lewars, who was a 
ministering angel in his final illness, and was re- 
paid by the only thing he could bestow, — a song 
of exquisite sweetness, " Here's a health to ane 
I lo'e dear." Our informant had seen in that 
lady's hands the lines beginning " Thine be the 
volumes, Jessy fair," which the poet gave her 
with a present of books within a month of his 
death. Many other reminiscences related by 
the niece are to be found in the biographies of 
the bard, and need not be repeated. The let- 
ters which hung upon her walls are not included 
in any published collection. She assisted us 
in copying the following to Burns's youngest 
brother : 



190 



A Letter of Burns 



" Isle, Tuesday Evening. 
" Dear William, — In my last I recom- 
mended that valuable apothegm, Learn taciturn- 
ity. It is certain that nobody can know our 
thoughts, and yet, from a slight observation of 
mankind, one would not think so. What mis- 
chiefs daily arise from silly garrulity and foolish 
confidence ! There is an excellent Scots saying 
that a man's mind is his kingdom. It is cer- 
tainly so, but how few can govern that kingdom 
with propriety ! The serious mischiefs in Busi- 
ness which this Flux of language occasions do 
not come immediately to your situation, but in 
another point of view — the dignity of man — 
now is the time that will make or mar. Yours 
is the time of life for laying in habits. You 
cannot avoid it, tho' you will choose, and these 
habits will stick to your last end. At after- 
periods, even at so little advance as my years, 
'tis true that one may still be very sharp-sighted 
to one's habitual failings and weaknesses, but to 
eradicate them, or even to amend them, is quite 
a different matter. Acquired at first by acci- 
dent, they by-and-by begin to be, as it were, a 
necessary part of our existence. I have not 
time for more. Whatever you read, whatever 
you hear of that strange creature man, look into 
the living world about you, look to yourself, for 
191 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

the evidences of the fact or the application of 
the doctrine. I am ever yours, 

** Robert Burns. 
" Mr. William Burns, Saddler, Longtown." 

The sentiment and style of this epistle are 
suggestive of the stilted conversations of Burns, 
recorded in Hugh Miller's " Recollections." 
Miss Begg was pleased by some account we could 
give her of American Burns monuments and fes- 
tivals ; she seemed reluctant to have us leave, 
called to us a cheery ■* God keep ye !" when we 
were without the gate, and stood looking after 
us until the intervening foliage hid her from our 
sight. As we walked Ayr-ward, while the sun 
was settling in a golden haze behind the hills of 
Arran, we felt that we had been very near to 
Burns that day, — had almost felt the thrill of his 
presence, the charm of his voice, and had in 
some measure made a personal acquaintance with 
him which would evermore move us to a ten- 
derer regard for the man and a truer appreciation 
of his verse, as well as a fuller charity for his 

faults, — 

We know in part what he has done, 
God knows what he resisted. 

For some months after our visit to Bridgeside, 
quaint letters — one of them containing a por- 
trait of the worthy occupant of the cottage — 
192 



Death of Burns's Niece 

followed us thence across the sea. These came 
at increasing intervals and then stopped; the 
kindly heart of the niece of Burns had ceased to 
beat on her eightieth birthday. 

A recent pilgrim in Burnsland found an added 
line on the gravestone in the old kirk-yard, to 
tell that Isabella Burns Begg rests there in 
eternal peace. At Bridgeside, her once cher- 
ished garden is a waste and her tiny cottage has 
wholly disappeared. " So do things pass away 
like a tale that is told." 



193 



HIGHLAND MARY: HER 
HOMES AND GRAVE 

Birthplace — Personal Appearance — Relations to Burns — 
Abodes : Mauchline, Coilsfield, etc.-Scenes of Courtship 
and Parting — Mementos — Tomb by the Clyde. 

HP HERE is no stronger proof of the transcend- 
"*• ing power of the genius of Burns than is 
found in the fact that, by a bare half dozen of 
his stanzas, an humble dairy servant — else un- 
heard of outside her parish and forgotten at her 
death — is immortalized as a peeress of Petrarch's 
Laura and Dante's Beatrice, and has been for a 
century loved and mourned of all the world. 
We owe much of our tenderest poesy to the 
heroines whose charms have attuned the fancy 
and aroused the impassioned muse of enamoured 
bards; readers have always exhibited a natural 
avidity to realize the personality of the beings 
who inspired the tender lays, — prompted often 
by mere curiosity, but more often by a desire to 
appreciate the tastes and motives of the poets 
themselves. How little is known of Highland 
Mary, the most famous heroine of modern song, 
is shown by the brief, incoherent, and often con- 
tradictory allusions to her which the biographies 
of the ploughman-poet contain. This paper, 
— prepared during a sojourn in " The Land 
o' Burns," — while it adds a little to our meagre 
194 



Birthplace — Early Home 

knowledge of Mary Campbell, aims to present 
consecutively and congruously so much as may 
now be known of her brief life, her relations to 
the bard, and her sad, heroic death. 

She first saw the light in 1764, at Ardrossan, 
on the coast, fifteen miles northward from the 
" auld town of Ayr." Her parentage was of the 
humblest, her father being a sailor before the 
mast, and the poor dwelling which sheltered her 
was in no way superior to the meanest of those 
we find to-day on the narrow streets of her vil- 
lage. From her birthplace we see, across the 
Firth of Clyde, the beetling mountains of the 
Highlands, where she afterward dwelt, and 
southward the great mass of Ailsa Craig loom- 
ing, a gigantic pyramid, out of the sea. Mary 
was named for her aunt, wife of Peter McPher- 
son, a ship-carpenter of Greenock, in whose 
house Mary died. In her infancy her family 
removed to the vicinage of Dunoon, on the 
western shore of the Firth, eight miles below 
Greenock, leaving the oldest daughter at Ar- 
drossan. Mary grew to young womanhood 
near Dunoon, then returned to Ayrshire, and 
found occupation at Coilsfield, near Tarbolton, 
where her acquaintance with Burns soon began. 
He told a lady that he first saw Mary while 
walking in the woods of Coilsfield, and first 
spoke with her at a rustic merry-making, and, 
195 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

" having the luck to win her regards from other 
suitors," they speedily became intimate. At this 
period of life Burns's " eternal propensity to fall 
into love" was unusually active, even for him, and 
his passion for Mary (at this time) was one of 
several which engaged his heart in the interval 
between the reign of Ellison Begbie — " the lass 
of the twa sparkling, roguish een" — and that of 
" Bonnie Jean." Mary subsequently became a 
servant in the house of Burns's landlord, Gavin 
Hamilton, a lawyer of Mauchline, who had 
early recognized the genius of the bard and ad- 
mitted him to an intimate friendship, despite his 
inferior condition. When Hamilton was perse- 
cuted by the kirk, Burns, partly out of sympa- 
thy with him, wrote the satires, " Holy Willie's 
Prayer," « The Twa Herds," and " The Holy 
Fair," which served to unite the friends more 
closely, and brought the poet often to the house 
where Mary was an inmate. This house — a 
sombre structure of stone, little more preten- 
tious than its neighbors — we found on the 
shabby street not far from Armour's cottage, 
the church of " The Holy Fair," and " Posie 
Nansie's" inn, where the "Jolly Beggars" used 
to congregate. Among the dingy rooms shown 
us in Hamilton's house was that in which he 
married Burns to " Bonnie Jean" Armour. 
The bard's niece, Miss Begg, of Bridgeside, 
196 



Personal Appearance 

told the writer that she often heard Burns's 
mother describe Mary as she saw her at Hamil- 
ton's : she had a bonnie face, a complexion of 
unusual fairness, soft blue eyes, a profusion of 
shining hair which fell to her knees, a petite fig- 
ure which made her seem younger than her 
twenty summers, a bright smile, and pleasing 
manners, which won the old lady's heart. This 
description is, in superlative phrase, corrobo- 
rated by Lindsay in Hugh Miller's w Recol- 
lections :" she was " beautiful, sylph-like," her 
bust and neck were " exquisitely moulded," her 
arms and feet " had a statue-like symmetry and 
marble-like whiteness ;" but it was in her lovely 
countenance that "nature seemed to have ex- 
hausted her utmost skill," — " the loveliest creat- 
ure I have ever seen," etc. All who have 
written of her have noticed her beauty, her good 
sense, her modesty and self-respect. But these 
qualities were now insufficient to hold the roving 
fancy of Burns, whose " susceptibility to imme- 
diate impressions" (so called by Byron, who 
had the same failing) passes belief. His first 
ephemeral fancy for Mary took little hold upon 
his heart, and the best that can be said of it is 
that it was more innocent than the loves which 
came before and after it. Within a stone's-throw 
of Mary dwelt Jean Armour, and when the 
former returned to Coilsfield, he promptly fell 
197 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

in love with Jean, and solaced himself with her 
more buxom and compliant charms. It was a 
year or so later, when his intercourse with Jean 
had burdened him with grief and shame, that 
the tender and romantic affection for Mary came 
into his life. She was yet at Coilsfield, and 
while he was in hiding — his heart tortured by 
the apparent perfidy of Jean and all the country- 
side condemning his misconduct — his intimacy 
with Mary was renewed ; his quickened vision 
now discerned her endearing attributes, her trust 
and sympathy were precious in his distress, 
and awoke in him an affection such as he never 
felt for any other woman. During a few brief 
weeks the lovers spent their evenings and Sab- 
baths together, loitering amid the 

" Banks and braes and streams around 
The castle of Montgomery," 

talking of the golden days that were to be theirs 
when present troubles were past j then came the 
parting which the world will never forget, and 
Mary relinquished her service and went to her 
parents at Campbeltown, — a port of Cantyre 
behind " Arran's mountain isle." Of this part- 
ing Burns says, in a letter to Thomson, " We 
met by appointment on the second Sunday of 
May, in a sequestered spot on the Ayr, where 
we spent the day in taking farewell before she 
198 



Betrothal and Parting — Mementos 

should embark for the West Highlands to pre- 
pare for our projected change of life." Lovers 
of Burns linger over this final parting, and detail 
the impressive ceremonials with which the pair 
solemnized their betrothal : they stood on either 
side of a brook, they laved their hands in the 
water and scattered it in the air to symbolize the 
purity of their intentions ; clasping hands above 
an open Bible, they swore to be true to each 
other forever, then exchanged Bibles, and parted 
never to meet more. It is not strange that 
when death had left him nothing of her but her 
poor little Bible, a tress of her golden hair, and 
a tender memory of her love, the recollection 
of this farewell remained in his soul forever. 
He has pictured it in the exquisite lines of 
«« Highland Mary" and " To Mary in Heaven." 
In the monument at Alloway — between the 
" auld haunted kirk" and the bridge where 
Maggie lost her tail — we are shown a memento 
of the parting ; it is the Bible which Burns gave 
to Mary and above which their vows were said. 
At Mary's death it passed to her sister, at Ar- 
drossan, who bequeathed it to her son William 
Anderson ; subsequently it was carried to Amer- 
ica by one of the family, whence it has been 
recovered to be treasured here. It is a pocket 
edition in two volumes, to one of which is 
attached a lock of poor Mary's shining hair. 
199 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

Within the cover of the first volume the hand 
of Burns has written, " And ye shall not swear 
by my name falsely, I am the Lord ;" within 
the second, " Thou shalt not forswear thyself 
but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths." 
Upon a blank leaf of each volume is Burns's 
Masonic signet, with the signature, "Robert 
Burns, Mossgiel," written beneath. Mary's 
spinning-wheel is preserved in the adjoining 
cottage. A few of her bright hairs, severed in 
her fatal fever, are among the treasures of the 
writer and lie before him as he pens these lines. 
A visit to the scenes of the brief passion of 
the pair is a pleasing incident of our Burns-pil- 
grimage. Coilsfield House is somewhat changed 
since Mary dwelt beneath its roof, — a great ram- 
bling edifice of gray weather-worn stone with a 
row of white pillars aligned along its facade, its 
massive walls embowered in foliage and envi- 
roned by the grand woods which Burns and 
Mary knew so well. It was then a seat of Colo- 
nel Hugh Montgomerie, a patron of Burns. 
The name Coilsfield is derived from Coila, the 
traditional appellation of the district. The 
grounds comprise a billowy expanse of wood 
and sward ; great reaches of turf, dotted with 
trees already venerable when the lovers here had 
their tryst a hundred years ago, slope away from 
the mansion to the Faile and border its mur- 



Coilsfield — Plans of the Lovers 

muring course to the Ayr. Here we trace with 
romantic interest the wanderings of the pair 
during the swift hours of that last day of part- 
ing love, their lingering way 'neath the " wild 
wood's thickening green," by the pebbled shore 
of Ayr to the brooklet where their vows were 
made, and thence along the Faile to the wood- 
land shades of Coilsfield, where, at the close of 
that winged day, " pledging oft to meet again, 
they tore themselves asunder." Howitt found 
at Coilsfield a thorn-tree, called by all the coun- 
try " Highland Mary's thorn," and believed to 
be the place of final parting ; years ago the tree 
was notched and broken by souvenir seekers ; if 
it be still in existence the present occupant of 
Coilsfield is unaware. 

At the time of his parting with Mary, Burns 
had already resolved to emigrate to Jamaica, and 
it has been supposed, from his own statements and 
those of his biographers, that the pair planned to 
emigrate together; but Burns soon abandoned 
this project and, perhaps, all thought of marrying 
Mary. The song commencing " Will ye go to 
the Indies, my Mary ?" has been quoted to show 
he expected her to accompany him, but he says, 
in an epistle to Thomson, that this was his fare- 
well to her, and in another song, written while 
preparing to embark, he declares that it is leaving 
Mary that makes him wish to tarry. Further, 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

we find that with the first nine pounds received 
from the sale of his poems he purchased a single 
passage to Jamaica, — manifestly having no inten- 
tion of taking her with him. Her being at 
Greenock in October, en route to a new place 
of service at Glasgow, indicates she had no 
hope that he would marry her then, or soon. 
True, he afterward said she came to Greenock 
to meet him, but it is certain that he knew 
nothing of her being there until after her death. 
During the summer of 1786, while she was pre- 
paring to wed him, he indited two love-songs to 
her, but they are not more glowing than those 
of the same time to several inamoratas, — less 
impassioned than the " Farewell to Eliza" and 
allusions to Jean in " Farewell, old Scotia's bleak 
domains," — and barely four weeks after his ar- 
dent and solemn parting with Mary we find him 
writing to Brice, " I do still love Jean to dis- 
traction." Poor Mary ! Possibly the fever 
mercifully saved her from dying of a broken 
heart. The bard's anomalous affectional condi- 
tion and conduct may perhaps be explained by 
assuming that he loved Mary with a refined and 
spiritual passion so different from his love for 
others — and especially from his conjugal love 
for Jean — that the passions could coexist in his 
heart. The alternative explanation is that his 
love for Mary, while she lived, was by no means 
202 



Burns's Regard for Mary — Her Death 

the absorbing passion which he afterward be- 
lieved it to have been. When death had hal- 
lowed his memories of her love and of all their 
sweet intercourse, — beneficent death ! that beau- 
tifies, ennobles, irradiates, in the remembrance 
of survivors, the loved ones its touch has taken, 
— then his soul, swelling with the passion that 
throbs in the strains of " To Mary in Heaven," 
would not own to itself that its love had ever 
been less. 

Mary remained at Campbeltown during the 
summer of 1786. Coming to Greenock in the 
autumn, she found her brother sick of a malig- 
nant fever at the house of her aunt ; bravely 
disregarding danger of contagion, she devoted 
herself to nursing him, and brought him to a 
safe convalescence only to be herself stricken by 
his malady and to rapidly sink and die, a sacrifice 
to her sisterly affection. By this time the suc- 
cess of his poems had determined Burns to re- 
main in Scotland, and he returned to Mossgiel, 
where tidings of Mary's death reached him. 
His brother relates that when the letter was 
handed to him he went to the window to read 
it, then his face was observed to change sud- 
denly, and he quickly went out without speak- 
ing. In June of the next year he made a soli- 
tary journey to the Highlands, apparently drawn 
by memory of Mary. If, indeed, he dropped 
203 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

a tear upon her neglected grave and visited 
her humble Highland home, we may almost 
forgive him the excesses of that tour, if not 
the renewed liaison with Jean which imme- 
diately preceded, and the amorous correspond- 
ence with " Clarinda" (Mrs. M'Lehose) which 
followed it. 

Whatever the quality or degree of his passion 
for Mary living, his grief for her dead was deep 
and tender, and expired only with his life. 
Cherished in his heart, it manifested itself now 
in some passage of a letter, now in some pa- 
thetic burst of song, — like " The Lament" and 
" Highland Mary," — and again in some emo- 
tional act. Of many such acts narrated to the 
writer by Burns's niece, the following is, per- 
haps, most striking. The poet attended the 
wedding of Kirstie Kirkpatrick, a favorite of his, 
who often sang his songs for him, and, after the 
wedded pair had retired, a lass of the company, 
being asked to sing, began " Highland Mary." 
Its effect upon Burns " was painful to witness ; 
he started to his feet, prayed her in God's name 
to forbear, then hastened to the door of the 
marriage-chamber and entreated the bride to 
come and quiet his mind with a verse or two 
of * Bonnie Doon.' " The lines " To Mary in 
Heaven" and the pathetic incidents of their com- 
position show most touchingly how he mourned 
204 



Her Grave 

his fair-haired lassie years after she ceased to be. 
It was at Ellisland, October 20, 1789, the anni- 
versary of Mary's death, an occasion which 
brought afresh to his heart memories of the ten- 
der past. Jean has told us of his increasing si- 
lence and unrest as the day declined, of his 
aimless wandering by Nithside at nightfall, of 
his rapt abstraction as he lay pillowed by the 
sheaves of his stack-yard, gazing entranced at 
the " lingering star" above him till the immortal 
song was born. 

Poor Mary is laid in the burial-plot of her 
uncle in the west kirk-yard of Greenock, near 
Crawford Street; our pilgrimage in Burnsland 
may fitly end at her grave. A pathway, beaten 
by the feet of many reverent visitors, leads us to 
the spot. It is so pathetically different from the 
scenes she loved in life, — the heather-clad slopes 
of her Highland home, the seclusion of the 
wooded braes where she loitered with her poet- 
lover. Scant foliage is about her ; few birds 
sing above her here. She lies by the wall; 
narrow streets hem in the enclosure ; the air is 
sullied by smoke from factories and from steam- 
ers passing within a stone's-throw on the busy 
Clyde ; the clanging of many hammers and the 
discordant din of machinery and traffic invade 
the place and sound in our ears as we muse above 
the ashes of the gentle lassie. 
205 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

For half a century her grave was unmarked 
and neglected ; then, by subscription, a monu- 
ment of marble, twelve feet in height, and of 
graceful proportions, was raised. It bears a 
sculptured medallion representing Burns and 
Mary, with clasped hands, plighting their troth. 
Beneath is the simple inscription, read oft by 
eyes dim with tears : 

Erected Over the Grave of 
Highland Mary 
1842. 
" My Mary, dear departed shade, 

Where is thy place of blissful rest?" 



206 



BRONTE SCENES IN BRUS- 
SELS 



School-Class-Rooms-Dormitory— Garden-Scenes and Events of 
Villette andThe Professor-M. Paul-Madame Beck-Mem- 
ories of the Brontes-Confessional-Grave of Jessy Torke. 

1X7E had " done" Brussels after the approved 
* * fashion, — had faithfully visited the 
churches, palaces, museums, theatres, galleries, 
monuments ; had duly admired thd windows and 
carvings of the grand cathedral, the tower and 
tapestry and frescos and facade of the Hotel de 
Ville, the stately halls and the gilded dome of 
the Courts of Justice, and the consummate beauty 
of the Bourse ; had diligently sought out the 
naive boy-fountain, and had made the usual ex- 
cursion to the field of Waterloo. 

This delightful task being conscientiously 
discharged, we proposed to devote our last day in 
the Belgian capital to the accomplishment of one 
of the cherished projects of our lives, — the search- 
ing out of the localities associated with Charlotte 
Bronte's unhappy school-life here, which she 
has so graphically portrayed. For our purpose 
no guide was needful, for the topography and 
local coloring of " Villette" and " The Profes- 
sor" are as vivid and unmistakable as in the best 
work of Dickens himself. Proceeding from St. 
207 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

Gudule to the Rue Royale, and a short distance 
along that thoroughfare, we reached the park 
and a locality familiar to Miss Bronte's readers. 
Seated in this lovely pleasure-ground, the gift 
of the Empress Maria Theresa, with its cool 
shade all about us, we noted the long avenues 
and the paths winding amid trees and shrubbery, 
the dark foliage ineffectually veiling the gleaming 
statuary and the sheen of bright fountains, " the 
stone basin with its clear depth, the thick- 
planted trees which framed this tremulous and 
rippled mirror," the groups of happy people 
filling the seats in secluded nooks or loitering in 
the mazes and listening to the music ; we noted 
all this, and felt that Miss Bronte had revealed 
it to us long ago. It was across this park that 
Lucy Snowe was piloted from the bureau of the 
diligence by the chivalrous Dr. John on the 
night when she, despoiled, helpless, and solitary, 
arrived in Brussels. She found the park deserted, 
the paths miry, the water dripping from the 
trees. " In the double gloom of tree and fog 
she could not see her guide, and could only fol- 
low his tread" in the darkness. We recalled 
another scene under these same trees, on a 
night when the gate-way was "spanned by a 
flaming arch of massed stars." The park was a 
"forest with sparks of purple and ruby and 
golden fire gemming the foliage," and Lucy, 
208 



The Park — Heger Mansion 

driven from her couch by mental torture, 
wandered unrecognized amid the gay throng at 
the midnight concert of the Festival of the 
Martyrs and looked upon her lover, her friends 
the Brettons, and the secret junta of her enemies, 
Madame Beck, Madame Walravens, and PSre 
Silas. The sense of familiarity with the vici- 
nage grew as we observed our surroundings. 
Facing us, at the extremity of the park, was the 
palace of the king, in the small square across the 
Rue Royale at our right was the statue of Gen- 
eral Beliard, and we knew that just behind it we 
should find the Bronte school j for " The Pro- 
fessor," standing by the statue, had looked down 
a great staircase to the door-way of the school, 
and poor Lucy on that forlorn first night in 
" Villette," to avoid a pair of ruffians, had 
hastened down a flight of steps from the Rue 
Royale and had come, not to the inn she sought, 
but to the pensionnat of Madame Beck. From the 
statue we descended, by a series of stone stairs, 
into a narrow street, old-fashioned and clean, 
quiet and secluded in the very heart of the great 
city, and just opposite the foot of the steps we 
came to the wide door of a spacious, quadrangu- 
lar, stuccoed old mansion, with a bit of foliage 
showing over a high wall at one side. A bright 
plate embellished the door and bore the name 
Heger. A Latin inscription in the wall of the 
o 209 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

house showed it to have been given to the Guild 
of Royal Archers by the Infanta Isabelle early 
in the seventeenth century. Long before that 
the garden had been the orchard and herbary of 
a convent and the Hospital for the Poor. 

We were detained at the door long enough 
to remember Lucy standing there, trembling and 
anxious, awaiting admission, and then we too 
were " let in by a bonne in a smart cap," appar- 
ently a fit successor to the Rosine of other days, 
and entered the corridor. This was paved with 
blocks of black and white marble and had 
painted walls. It extended through the entire 
depth of the house, and at its farther extremity 
an open door afforded us a glimpse of the garden. 
We were ushered into the little salon at the left 
of the passage, the one often mentioned in 
" Villette," and here we made known our wish 
to see the garden and class-rooms, and met with 
a prompt refusal from the neat portresse. We 
tried diplomacy (also lucre) without avail: it 
was the grandes vacances, M. Heger was engaged, 
we could not be gratified, — unless, indeed, we 
were patrons of the school. At this juncture a 
portly, ruddy-faced lady of middle age and most 
courteous of speech and manner appeared, and, 
addressing us in faultless English, introduced 
herself as Mdlle. Heger, co-directress of the 
school, and "wholly at our service." In 
210 



Characters of Villette 

response to our apologies for the intrusion and 
explanations of the desire which had prompted 
it, we received complaisant assurances of wel- 
come ; yet the manner of our entertainer indi- 
cated that she did not share in our admiration and 
enthusiasm for Charlotte Bronte and her books. 
In the subsequent conversation it appeared that 
Mademoiselle and her family hold decided 
opinions upon the subject, — something more 
than mere lack of admiration. She was familiar 
with the novels, and thought that, while they 
exhibit a talent certainly not above mediocrity, 
they reflect the injustice, the untruthfulness, and 
the ingratitude of their creator. We were obliged 
to confess to ourselves that the family have 
reason for this view, when we reflected that in 
the books Miss Bronte has assailed their religion 
and disparaged the school and the characters of 
the teachers and pupils, has depicted Madame 
Heger in the odious duad of Madame Beck and 
Mdlle. Reuter, has represented M. Heger as the 
scheming and deceitful Pelet and the preposter- 
ous Paul, Lucy Snowe's lover; that this lover 
was the husband of Madame Heger, and father 
of the family of children to whom Lucy was at 
first bonne d'enfants, and that possibly the 
daughter she has described as the thieving, 
vicious Desiree — " that tadpole Desiree Beck" 
— was this very lady now so politely entertaining 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

us. To all this add the significant fact that 
" Villette" is an autobiographical novel, which 
" records the most vivid passages in Miss 
Bronte's own sad heart's history," not a few of 
the incidents being transcripts " from the darkest 
chapter of her own life," and the light which 
the consideration of this fact throws upon her 
relations with members of the family will help 
us to apprehend the stand-point from which the 
Hegers judge Miss Bronte and her work, and to 
excuse a natural resentment against one who has 
presented them in a decidedly bad light. How 
bad we realized when, during the ensuing chat, 
we called to mind just what she had written of 
them. As Madame Beck, Madame Heger had 
been represented as lying, deceitful, and shame- 
less, as " watching and spying everywhere, 
peeping through every key-hole, listening behind 
every door," as duplicating Lucy's keys and 
secretly searching her bureau, as meanly ab- 
stracting her letters and reading them to others, 
as immodestly laying herself out to entrap the 
man to whom she had given her love unsought. 
It was some accession to the existing animosity 
between herself and Madame Heger which pre- 
cipitated Miss Bronte's departure from the pen- 
sionnat. Mrs. Gaskell ascribes their mutual dis- 
like to Charlotte's free expression of her aversion 
to the Catholic Church, of which Madame 



The Hegers 

Heger was a devotee, and hence ■• wounded in 
her most cherished opinions ;" but a later writer 
plainly intimates that Miss Bronte hated the 
woman who sat for Madame Beck because mar- 
riage had given to her the man whom Miss 
Bronte loved, and that " Madame Beck had 
need to be a detective in her own house." The 
death of Madame Heger had rendered the 
family, who held her only as a sacred memory, 
more keenly sensitive than ever to anything 
which would seem by implication to disparage 
her. 

For himself, it would appear that M. Heger 
had less cause for resentment ; for, although in 
" Villette" his double is pictured as " a waspish 
little despot," as detestably ugly, in his anger 
closely resembling " a black and sallow tiger," 
as having an "overmastering love of authority 
and public display," as playing the spy and 
reading purloined letters, and in the Bronte 
epistles Charlotte declares he is choleric and 
irritable, compels her to make her French trans- 
lations without a dictionary or grammar, and 
then has "his eyes almost plucked out of his 
head" by the occasional English word she is 
obliged to introduce, etc., yet all this is partially 
atoned for by the warm praise she subsequently 
accords him for his goodness to her and his dis- 
interested friendship, by the poignant regret she 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

expresses at parting with him, — perhaps wholly- 
expiated by the high compliment she pays him 
of making her heroine fall in love with him, or 
the higher compliment it is suspected she paid 
him of falling in love with him herself. One 
who reads the strange history of passion in 
u Villette," in conjunction with her letters, 
" will know more of the truth of her stay in 
Brussels than if a dozen biographers had under- 
taken to tell the whole tale." Still, M. Heger 
can hardly be pleased by having members of his 
school set forth as stupid, animal, and inferior, 
" their principles rotten to the core, steeped in 
systematic sensuality," by having his religion 
styled " besotted papistry, a piece of childish 
humbug," and the like. Something of the dis- 
pleasure of the family was revealed in the course 
of our conversation with Mdlle. Heger-, but the 
specific causes were but cursorily touched upon. 
She could have no personal recollection of the 
Brontes ; her knowledge of them was derived 
from her parents and the teachers, — presumably 
the " repulsive old maids" of Charlotte's letters. 
One teacher whom we saw in the school had 
been a classmate of Charlotte's here. The 
Brontes had not been popular with the school. 
Their " heretical" religion had something to do 
with this ; but their manifest avoidance of the 
other pupils during hours of recreation, Mad- 
214 



Recollections of the Brontes 

emoiselle thought, had been a more potent cause, 
— Emily, in particular, not speaking with her 
school-mates or teachers, except when obliged to 
do so. The other pupils thought them of out- 
landish accent and manners, and ridiculously old 
to be at school at all, — being twenty-four and 
twenty-six, and seeming even older. Their 
sombre and ugly costumes were fruitful causes 
of mirth to the gay young Belgian misses. The 
Brontes were not brilliant students, and none of 
their companions had ever suspected that they 
were geniuses. Of the two, Emily was consid- 
ered to be the more talented, but she was obsti- 
nate and opinionated. Some of the pupils had 
been inclined to reskt having Charlotte placed 
over them as teacher, and may have been muti- 
nous. After her return from Haworth she 
taught English to M. Heger and his brother-in- 
law. M. Heger gave the sisters private lessons 
in French without charge, and for some time 
preserved their compositions, which Mrs. Gas- 
kell copied. Mrs. Gaskell visited the pensionn at 
in quest of material for her biography of Char- 
lotte, and received all the aid M. Heger could 
afford : the information thus obtained was, we 
were told, fairly used. Miss Bronte's letters 
from Brussels, so freely quoted in Mrs. Gaskell's 
** Life," were addressed to Ellen Nussy, a famil- 
iar friend of Charlotte's, whose signature we saw 
"5 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

in the register at Haworth as witness to Miss 
Bronte's marriage. The Hegers had no sus- 
picion that she had been so unhappy with them 
as these letters indicate, and she had assigned a 
totally different reason for her sudden return to 
England. She had been introduced to Madame 
Heger by Mrs. Jenkins, wife of the then chap- 
lain of the British Embassy at the Court of Bel- 
gium ; she had frequently visited that lady and 
other friends in Brussels, — among them Mary 

and Martha Taylor and the family of a Dr. 

(not " Dr. John"), — and therefore her life here 
need not have been so lonely and desolate as it 
was made to appear. 

The Hegers usually have a few English pupils 
in the school, but have never had an American. 
American tourists have before called to look at 
the garden, but the family are not pleased by 
the notoriety with which Miss Bronte has in- 
vested it. However, Mdlle. Heger kindly offered 
to conduct us over any portion of the establish- 
ment we might care to see, and led the way along 
the corridor to the narrow, high- walled garden. 
We found it smaller than in the time when Miss 
Bronte loitered here in weariness and solitude. 
Mdlle. Heger explained that, while the width 
remained the same, the erection of class-rooms 
for the day-pupils had diminished the length by 
some yards. Tall houses surrounded and shut 
ftifi 



The Garden 

it in on either side, making it close and sombre, 
and the noises of the great city all about it 
penetrated only as a far-away murmur. There 
was a plat of verdant turf in the centre, bordered 
by scant flowers and gravelled walks, along which 
shrubs of evergreen were irregularly disposed. 
A few seats were here and there within the shade, 
where, as in Miss Bronte's time, the externats 
ate the lunch brought with them to the school ; 
and overlooking it all stood the great pear-trees, 
whose gnarled and deformed trunks were relics 
of the time of the convent. Beyond these and 
along the gray wall which bounded the farther 
side of the enclosure was the sheltered walk 
which was Miss Bronte's favorite retreat, the 
"allee defendue" of her novels. It was screened 
by shrubs and perfumed by flowers, and, being 
secure from the intrusion of pupils, we could 
well believe that Charlotte and her heroine found 
here restful seclusion. The coolness and quiet 
and, more than all, the throng of vivid associa- 
tions which filled the place tempted us to linger. 
The garden was not a spacious nor even a pretty 
one, and yet it seemed to us singularly pleasing 
and familiar, as if we were revisiting it after an 
absence. Seated upon a rustic bench close at 
hand, possibly the very one which Lucy had 
"reclaimed from fungi and mould," how the 
memories came surging up in our minds ! How 
zi7 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

often in the summer twilight poor Charlotte had 
lingered here in solitude after the day's burdens 
and trials with " stupid and impertinent" pupils ! 
How often, with weary feet and a dreary heart, 
she had paced this secluded walk and thought, 
with longing, of the dear ones in far-away 
Haworth parsonage ! In this sheltered corner 
her other self, Lucy, sat and listened to the dis- 
tant chimes and thought forbidden thoughts and 
cherished impossible hopes. Here she met and 
talked with Dr. John. Deep beneath this 
" Methuselah of a pear-tree," the one nearest 
the end of the alley, lies the imprisoned dust of 
the poor nun who was buried alive ages ago for 
some sin against her vow, and whose perambu- 
lating ghost so disquieted poor Lucy. At the 
root of this same tree one miserable night Lucy 
buried her precious letters, and meant also to 
bury a grief and her great affection for Dr. 
John. Here she leant her brow against Methu- 
selah's knotty trunk and uttered to herself those 
brave words of renunciation, " Good-night, Dr. 
John ; you are good, you are beautiful, but you 
are not mine. Good-night, and God bless you !" 
Here she held pleasant converse with M. Paul, 
and with him, spellbound, saw the ghost of the 
nun descend from the leafy shadows overhead 
and, sweeping close past their wondering faces, 
disappear behind yonder screen of shrubbery 
tl8 



Garden — School 

into the darkness of the summer night. By that 
tall tree next the class-rooms the ghost was wont 
to ascend to meet its material sweetheart, Fan- 
shawe, in the great garret beneath yonder sky- 
light, — the garret where Lucy retired to read Dr. 
John's letter, and wherein M. Paul confined her 
to learn her part in the vaudeville for Madame 
Beck's ftte-day. In this nook where we sat 
" The Professor" had walked and talked with 
and almost made love to Mdlle. Reuter, and 
from yonder window overlooking the alley had 
seen that perfidious fair one in dalliance with 
Pelet beneath these pear-trees. From that win- 
dow M. Paul watched Lucy as she sat or walked 
in the all'ee defendue, dogged by Madame Beck ; 
from the same window were thrown the love- 
letters which fell at Lucy's feet sitting here. 
Leaves from the overhanging boughs were 
plucked for us as souvenirs of the place ; then, 
reverently traversing once more the narrow alley 
so often traced in weariness by Charlotte Bronte, 
we turned away. From the garden we entered 
the long and spacious class-room of the first and 
second divisions. A movable partition divided 
it across the middle when the classes were in 
session ; the floor was of bare boards cleanly 
scoured. There were long ranges of desks and 
benches upon either side, and a lane through 
the middle led up to a raised platform at the end 
219 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

of the room, where the instructor's chair and 
desk were placed. 

How quickly our fancy peopled the place ! 
On these front seats sat the gay and indocile 
Belgian girls. There, " in the last row, in the 
quietest corner, sat Emily and Charlotte side by 
side, insensible to anything about them ;" and 
at the same desk, " in the farthest seat of the 
farthest row," sat Mdlle. Henri during Crims- 
worth's English lessons. Here Lucy's desk was 
rummaged by Paul and the tell-tale odor of 
cigars left behind. Here, after school-hours, 
Miss Bronte taught Heger English, he taught 
her French, and Paul taught Lucy arithmetic 
and (incidentally) love. This was the scene of 
their tite-cl-tHtes, of his efforts to persuade her 
into his religious faith, of their ludicrous sup- 
per of biscuit and baked apples, and of his final 
violent outbreak with Madame Beck, when she 
literally thrust herself between him and his love. 
From this platform Crimsworth and Lucy and 
Charlotte Bronte herself had given instruction 
to pupils whose insubordination had first to be 
confronted and overcome. Here Paul and Heger 
gave lectures upon literature, and Paul delivered 
his spiteful tirade against the English on the 
morning of his fite-day. Upon this desk were 
heaped his bouquets that morning ; from its 
smooth surface poor Lucy dislodged and fract- 



M. Paul 

ured his spectacles; and here, seated in Paul's 
chair, at Paul's desk, we saw and were presented 
to Paul Emanuel himself, — M. Heger. 

It was something more than curiosity which 
made us alert to note the appearance and manner 
of this man, who has been so nearly associated 
with Miss Bronte in an intercourse which col- 
ored her subsequent life and determined her life- 
work, who has been made the hero of her novels 
and has been deemed the hero of her own heart's 
romance ; and yet we were curious to know 
what manner of man it was who has been so 
much as suspected of being honored with the 
love and preference of the dainty Charlotte 
Bronte. During a short conversation with him 
we had opportunity to observe that in person 
this " wise, good, and religious" man must, at 
the time Miss Bronte knew him, have more 
closely resembled Pelet of " The Professor" 
than any other of her pen-portaits : indeed, after 
the lapse of more than forty years that delinea- 
tion still, for the most part, aptly applied to him. 
He was of middle size, of rather spare habit of 
body ; his face was fair and the features pleasing 
and regular, the cheeks were thin and the mouth 
flexible, the eyes — somewhat sunken — were of 
mild blue and of singularly pleasant expres- 
sion. We found him aged and somewhat in- 
firm ; his finely-shaped head was fringed with 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

white hair, and partial baldness contributed rev- 
erence to his presence and tended to enhance 
the intellectual effect of his wide brow. In 
repose his countenance showed a hint of melan- 
choly : as Miss Bronte said, his " physiognomy 
was fine et spirituelle ,•" one would hardly 
imagine it could ever resemble the " visage of 
a black and sallow tiger." His voice was low 
and soft, his bow still " very polite, not the- 
atrical, scarcely French," his manner suave and 
courteous, his dress scrupulously neat. He ac- 
costed us in the language Miss Bronte taught 
him forty years ago, and his accent and diction 
honored her instruction. He was talking with 
some patrons, and, as his daughter had hinted 
that he was averse to speaking of Miss Bronte, 
we soon took leave of him and were shown 
other parts of the school. The other class- 
rooms, used for less advanced pupils, were 
smaller. In one of them Miss Bronte had 
ruled as monitress after her return from Ha- 
worth. The large dormitory of the pensionnat 
was above the long class-room, and in the time 
of the Brontes most of the boarders — about 
twenty in number — slept here. Their cots were 
arranged along either side, and the position of 
those occupied by the Brontes was pointed out 
to us at the extreme end of the room. It was 
here that Lucy suffered the horrors of hypo- 



School Scenes — The Confessional 

chondria, so graphically portrayed in " Villette," 
and found the discarded costume of the spectral 
nun lying upon her bed, and here Miss Bronte 
passed those nights of wakeful misery which 
Mrs. Gaskell describes. A long, narrow room 
in front of the class-rooms was shown us as the 
refectoire, where the Brontes, with the other 
boarders, took their meals, presided over by M. 
and Madame Heger, and where, during the 
evenings, the lessons for the ensuing days were 
prepared. Here were held the evening prayers 
which Charlotte used to avoid by escaping into 
the garden. This, too, was the scene of Paul's 
readings to teachers and pupils, and of some of 
his spasms of petulance, which readers of "Vil- 
lette" will remember. From the refectoire we 
passed again into the corridor, where we made 
our adieus to our affable conductress. She ex- 
plained that, whereas this establishment had 
been both a pensionnat and an externaty having 
about seventy day-pupils and twenty boarders 
when Miss Bronte was here, it was after the 
death of Madame Heger used as a day-school 
only, — the pensionnat being in another street. 

The genuine local color Miss Bronte gives in 
" Villette" enabled us to be sure that we had 
found the sombre old church where Lucy, 
arrested in passing by the sound of the bells, 
knelt upon the stone pavement, passing thence 
223 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

into the confessional of Pere Silas. Certain it 
is that this old church lies upon the route she 
would take in the walk from the school to the 
Protestant cemetery, which she had set out to 
do that afternoon, and the narrow streets which 
lie beyond the church correspond to those in 
which she was lost. Certain, too, it is said to 
be that this incident is taken from her own ex- 
perience. Reid says, " During one of the long 
holidays, when her mind was restless and dis- 
turbed, she found sympathy, if not peace, in the 
counsels of a priest in the confessional, who 
soothed her troubled spirit without attempting 
to enmesh it in the folds of Romanism. " 

Our way to the Protestant cemetery — a spot 
sadly familiar to Miss Bronte, and the usual 
termination of her walks — lay past the site of 
the Porte de Louvain and out to the hills be- 
yond the old city limits. From our path we 
saw more than one tree-shrouded farm-house 
which might have been the place of Paul's 
breakfast with his school, and at least one quaint 
mansion, with green-tufted and terraced lawns, 
which might have served Miss Bronte as the 
model for La Terrasse, the suburban home of the 
Brettons and temporary abode of the Taylor 
sisters whom she visited here. From the ceme- 
tery are beautiful vistas of farther lines of hills, 
of intervening valleys, of farms and villas, and 
224 



The Cemetery 

of the great city lying below. Miss Bronte has 
well described this place : " Here, on pages of 
stone and of brass, are written names, dates, last 
tributes of pomp or love, in English, French, 
German, and Latin." There are stone crosses 
all about, and great thickets of roses and yews ; 
" cypresses that stand straight and mute, and 
willows that hang low and still ;" and there are 
" dim garlands of everlasting flowers." Here 
" The Professor" found his long-sought sweet- 
heart kneeling at a new-made grave under the 
overhanging trees. And here we found the 
shrine of poor Charlotte Bronte's many pil- 
grimages hither, — the burial-place of her friend 
and school-mate, the Jessy Yorke of " Shirley ;" 
the spot where, under " green sod and a gray 
marble head-stone, cold, coffined, solitary, Jessy 
sleeps below." 



225 



LEMAN'S SHRINES 



Beloved of Litt'erateurs-Gibbon-D* Aubigne-Rouneau-Byron— 
Shelley— Dickens y etc.— Scenes of Childe Harold-Nouvelle 
Helo'ise-Prisoner of Chillon-Land of Byron. 

A PILGRIMAGE in the track of Childe 
■*** Harold brings us from the shores of Al- 
bion, by Belgium's capital and deadly Waterloo, 
along the castled Rhine and over mountain-pass 
to " Italia, home and grave of empires," and to 
the sublimer scenery of " Manfred," " Chillon," 
and third canto of the pilgrim-poet's master- 
piece ; to his "silver-sheeted Staubbach" and 
" arrowy Rhone," " soaring Jungfrau" and 
" bleak Mont Blanc." We linger with especial 
pleasure on the shores of ** placid Leman," in 
an enchanting region which teems with literary 
shrines and is pervaded with memories and 
associations — often so thrilling and vivid that 
they seem like veritable and sensible presences 
— of the brilliant number who have here had 
their haunts. Here Calvin wrought his Com- 
mentaries ; here Voltaire polished his darts ; 
here Rousseau laid his impassioned tale ; here 
Dickens, Byron, and Shelley loitered and wrote ; 
here Gibbon and de Stael, Schlegel and Con- 
stant, and many another scarcely less famous, 
lived and wrought the treasures of their knowl- 
edge and fancy into the literature of the world. 
226 



Haunts of Litterateurs 

A lingering voyage round the lake, like that of 
Byron and Shelley, is a delight to be remembered 
through a lifetime, and affords opportunity to 
visit the spots consecrated by genius upon these 
shores. At Geneva we find the inn where 
Byron lodged and first met the author of " Queen 
Mab," the house in which Rousseau was born, 
the place where d'Aubigne wrote his history, 
the sometime home of John Calvin. Near by, 
in a house presented by the Genevese after his 
release from the long imprisonment suffered on 
their account, dwelt Bonnivard, Byron's immor- 
tal " Prisoner of Chillon," and here he suffered 
from his procession of wives and finally died. 
Just beyond the site of the fortifications, on the 
east side of the city, is an eminence whose slopes 
are tastefully laid out with walks that wind, 
amid sward and shrub, to the observatory which 
crowns the summit and marks the site of Bon- 
nivard's Priory of St. Victor, lost to him by his 
devotion to Genevan independence. Not far 
away is the public library, founded by his be- 
quest of his modest collection of books and MSS. 
which we see here carefully preserved. Here 
also is an old portrait of the prisoner, which 
represents him as a reckless and jolly " good 
fellow" rather than a saintly hero, and accords 
better with his character as described by late 
writers than with the common conception of him. 
227 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

Byron loved this Leman lake, and it is said his 
discontented sprite still walks its margins ; cer- 
tain it is he remains its poetic genius; his melody 
seems to wake in every breeze that stirs its 
surface. The Villa Diodati, a plain, quadrangu- 
lar, three-storied mansion of moderate dimen- 
sions, standing on the shore a few miles from 
Geneva, was the handsome " Giaour's" first 
home after his separation from Lady Byron and 
his exile from England. It had been the resi- 
dence of the Genevan Professor Diodati and the 
sojourn of his friend the poet Milton. Pleasant 
vineyards surround the place and slope away to 
the water, but there is little in the spot or its 
near environment to commend it to the fancy of 
a poet. Byron's study here was a sombre room 
at the back from which neither the lake nor the 
snowy peaks were visible, and here he wrote, 
besides many minor poems, " Manfred," " Pro- 
metheus," " Darkness," " Dream," and the third 
canto of "Childe Harold." Here also he 
wrote " Marriage of Belphegor," a tale setting 
forth his version of his own infelicitous marriage ; 
but hearing that his wife was seriously ill, he 
burned it in his study fire. From here, by in- 
stigation of de Stael, he sent to Lady Byron in- 
effectual overtures for a reconciliation. His 
companion at the villa was an eccentric Italian 
physician, Polidori, who was uncle to the poet 

2*8 






Byron at Villa Diodati — Shelley 

Rossetti, and who here quarrelled with Byron's 
guests and wrote " The Vampire," a weird pro- 
duction afterward attributed to Byron. Lovers 
of Byron owe much to his sojourn on Leman ; 
he found in the inspiring landscapes here, 
especially in the environment of mountains, a 
power that profoundly stirred what his wife 
called " the angel in him." His letters recog- 
nize an afflatus breathed upon him by the "majesty 
around and above," and the quality of the poems 
here produced shows his yielding and response 
to that benign influence ; many a gem of poetic 
thought was here begotten of lake and mount 
and cataract, which otherwise had never been. 
The insincere stanzas of some of his later poems 
would scarcely have been written on Leman. 
As we muse in the spots he frequented — wander- 
ing on the entrancing margins or floating on the 
crystal waters — and look thence upon the snow- 
crowned peaks, resplendent in the sunshine or 
roseate in the after-glow, we aspire to not only 
partake of his rapture in this sublime beauty, but 
to appreciate the deeper feelings to which it 
moved him. 

A villa near Byron's, and reached by a path 
through his grounds, — Maison Chapuis, of Mont 
AUegra, — was occupied that summer by the " im- 
passioned Ariel of English verse," with Mary 
Shelley and her brunette relative Jane Clermont 
229 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

(the Claire of Shelley's journal), who after bore 
to Byron a daughter called Alba by the Shelleys, 
but later named by Byron Allegra, for the 
place where he had known the mother. At 
Mont Allegra " Bridge of Arve," ** Intellectual 
Beauty," and Mrs. Shelley's weird " Franken- 
stein" were penned. Here Byron was a daily vis- 
itant, and the Shelleys were the usual companions 
of his excursions upon the lake of beauty, in a 
picturesque lateen-rigged boat which was the 
property of the poets and the counterpart of 
which we see moored by the Diodati shore, 
looking like a bit of the Levant transported to 
this tramontane water. The " white phantom" 
observed by telescopists on the opposite shore to 
sometimes embark with Byron, and which he 
gravely told Madame de Stael was his dog, was 
doubtless the frail Claire. The admonitions of 
de Stael anent his mode of life provoked Byron 
to take sure revenge by being attentive to her 
husband, which the overshadowing wife always 
resented as an affront upon herself. It is said 
the poet's observation of this pair prompted the 
couplet of " Don Juan :" 

M But oh ! ye lords of ladies intellectual, 
Inform us truly, have they not henpecked you all ?" 

Passing for the present the shrines of Ferney 
and Coppet, we find in picturesque Lausanne the 
230 



Voltaire — Gibbon — Dickens 

quaint house in which Voltaire lived several 
winters, and not far away the place where 
Secretan died a few months ago. Gibbon*s 
dwelling has been demolished, but we find the 
place of his summer-house where the great his- 
tory was completed, and of his famous rose-tree 
where Byron gathered roses long ago. Madame 
de Genlis narrates this incident of the great "De- 
cliner and Faller" at Lausanne : he was enam- 
oured of the comely Madame Crousaz, and, find- 
ing her alone, he knelt at her feet and besought 
her love. He received an unfavorable reply, but 
remained in his humble posture until the lady, 
after repeatedly requesting him to arise, discov- 
ered that his weight made it impossible, and 
summoned a servant to assist him to regain his 
feet. His obesity seems to have been a stand- 
ing jest among his acquaintances : a sufferer 
from indigestion, due to lack of exercise, was 
advised by a witty friend to " walk twice around 
Gibbon before breakfast. " Several decades later 
another illustrious English man of letters so- 
journed in Lausanne. A pretty cottage-villa, 
with embowered walls and flower-shaded porti- 
cos which look from a mild eminence across 
the crescentic lake, was, in 1846, the dwelling of* 
Dickens, who here wrote one of the matchless 
Christmas stories and a part of " Dombey and 
Son." From the magnificent slope of Lausanne 
a 3 i 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

the whole lake region is visible, with the dark 
Juras rising to the western horizon, the Alps of 
Savoy, and " the monarch of mountains with 
a diadem of snow" upholding the sky away in 
the south. At the foot of this slope is the 
port-town of Ouchy, a resort of Byron's in his 
sailing excursions ; at the plain little Anchor inn 
near the quai (Byron called it a " wretched inn") 
he lodged, and here, being detained two days 
(June 26 and 27, 18 16) by a storm which over- 
took him on his return from Chillon and Clarens, 
he wrote the touching " Prisoner of Chillon." 
In a parsonage not far from Lausanne was reared 
sweet Susanne Curchord, erst fiance of Gibbon, 
and later the mother of de Stael. 

Eastward is " Clarens, birthplace of deep 
love," whose " air is the breath of passionate 
thought, whose trees take root in love ;" about 
it lies the charming region which Rousseau chose 
for his fiction and peopled with affections, and 
where Byron, Houghton, and Shelley loved to 
linger. Here the latter first read " Nouvelle 
Heloi'se" amid the settings of its scenes ; here 
Byron wrote many glowing lines, inspired by 
the beauty and romantic associations around 
him. From the vine-clad terraces which cling 
to the heights we behold the view which enrapt- 
ured the poet, — a broad expanse of lacustrine 
beauty and Alpine sublimity, embracing the 



Rousseau — Chillon 

Leman shores from the Rhone to the Juras of 
Gex, the entire width of the " bleu impossible" 
lake and Alp piled on Alp beyond. Back of 
Clarens we find the spot of Rousseau's " Bosquet 
de Julie," and, at a little distance among embow- 
ering trees, the birthplace of a woman stranger 
than any fancied character of his fiction, the 
Madame de War/ens of his " Confessions." 

Between Clarens and Villeneuve, on an 
isolated rock whose base is laved by Leman's 
waters, which " meet and flow a thousand feet 
in depth below," stands the grim prison of 
Chillon, the scene of Byron's poem. The 
fortress is an irregular pile of masonry, and, 
with its massive walls, loop-holed towers, and 
white battlements, is a picturesque object seen 
across wide reaches of the lake. The present 
structure is a hoary successor to a stronghold 
still more ancient : the prehistoric lake-dwellers 
here had a fortress and were succeeded by the 
Franks and Romans. Of the present structure, 
the Romanesque columns and the range of dun- 
geons are known to have been in existence in 
830, when Count Wala, a cousin of Charlemagne, 
for alluding to the wife of Louis the Debonair 
as " that adulterous woman," was incarcerated 
here. Thus Judith's reputation was vindicated 
and the earliest certain date of this fortress fixed. 
The present superstructure remains unchanged 
*33 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

since the thirteenth century. It is now con- 
nected with the shore by a wooden structure 
which spans the moat and replaces the ancient 
drawbridge. Through a massive gate-way we 
enter a roughly-paved court, whence a bluff 
Savoyard conducts us through the romantic pile. 
Among the apartments of the ducal family we 
see the banqueting-hall where the dukes held 
roistering wassail ; the kitchen on whose great 
hearth oxen were roasted whole ; the Chamber 
of Inquisition where hapless prisoners were tor- 
tured to extort confession, this room being near 
the chamber of the duchess, into which — de- 
spite its thick wall, — the shrieks of the tortured 
must have sometimes penetrated and disturbed 
Her Serene Highness. Outside her door is a 
post to which the wretches were bound, and it is 
scored by marks of the irons which cauterized 
their flesh ; in a near corner stood a rack which 
rent them limb from limb. The crypt beneath, 
with its low arched vaults and its graceful pillars 
rising out of the rock, is the most interesting 
portion of the fortress. Referring to their 
architectural perfection, Longfellow once said 
these were the " most delightful dungeons he ever 
saw," but as we stand in their twilight gloom 
the horrors of their history weigh heavily on 
the heart. During this century the castle has 
been used as an arsenal, but occasionally also 
234 



Prison of Chillon 

as a prison, and Byron found some of these 
w chambers of sorrow" tenanted at the time 
of his visits. One contracted cell is that in 
which the condemned passed their last night of 
life chained upon a rock, near the beam upon 
which they were strangled and the opening 
through which their bodies were thrust into the 
lake. Another vault contains a pit or well, with 
a spiral stair down which poor dupes stepped 
into a yawning depth and — eternity. A third 
chamber, so dark that its grotesque carvings are 
scarcely discernible and no missal could be read 
by daylight, was the chapel of the fortress. 
Traversing the succession of dungeons, we come 
to the last and largest, and reverently stand 
beside the column where Byron's prisoner was 
chained. This "dungeon deep and old" lies 
not beneath the level of the lake, as Byron 
believed, yet it is sufficiently dank and dismal to 
be the appropriate scene of the touching and 
tragic story which he located here. It is a long, 
crypt-like apartment, whose vaulted roof of rock 
is upheld by the " seven pillars of Gothic 
mould" aligned along the middle. It is dimly 
lighted by loop-holes pierced in the ponderous 
walls for the feudal bowmen ; through these 
narrow apertures, where the prisoner " felt the 
winter's spray wash through the bars when winds 
were high," we look out, as did he, upon the 
235 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

distant town, " the lake with its white sails," 
the " mountains high," and the little Isle de Paix 
— " scarce broader than the dungeon floor" — 
gleaming like an emerald from a setting of 
amethyst. Here is Bonnivard's chain, scarce 
four feet long, and in the central pillar the ring 
which held it. The light, falling aslant 
" through the cleft of the thick wall" upon the 
floor, shows us the pathway worn in the rock 
by the pacing of the prisoner during the weary 
years, and reveals — graven on the column-stone 
by the poet's hand — the name Byron. 

At Chillon we are in the midst of a region 
pervaded by the sentiment of the pilgrim-poet. 
The Byron path leads from the shore to the 
broad terraces of the Hotel Byron, whence we 
behold as in a picture the romantic scene his 
poetry portrays, — the " mountains with their 
thousand years of snow," the shimmering water 
of " the wide long lake," the dark slopes of the 
Juras terraced to their summits, the "white- 
walled towns" upon the nearer hill-sides. 
Directly before us — bearing its three tall trees 
— •* the little isle, the only one in view," smiles 
in our faces from the bosom of the water ; on 
the right we see sweet Clarens and the pictu- 
resque battlements of Chillon ; on the left, the 
glittering peaks of Dent du Midi and the Alps 
of Savoy, with the " Rhone in fullest flow" 
236 



Rousseau and Byron Scenes 

between the rocky heights ; while from the 
farther shore rise the cliffs of Meillerie, at 
whose base Byron and Shelley, clinging to their 
frail boat, narrowly escaped a watery grave on 
the very spot where St. Preux and Julia of 
" Nouvelle Heloi'se" were rescued from the 
same fate. 

Our farewell view of this Land of Byron is 
taken on a cloudless summer night, when the 
radiance of the harvest moon exalts and glori- 
fies all the scene ; the grim prison of Bonnivard 
is transformed into a snowy palace of peaceful 
delights, the white mountain-peaks gleam with 
the chaste lustre of pearls, the vine-embowered 
village on the shore seems an Aidenn of purity 
and light, and the sheen of the tremulous water 
is that of a sea of molten silver. Surely, on all 
her round, " Luna lights no spot more fair." 



*37 



CHATEAUX OF FERNEY AND 
COPPET 

Voltaire's Home, Church, Study, Garden, Relics-Literary 
Court of de Sta'e'l— Mementos— Famous Rooms, Guests— 
Schlegel-Skelley— Constant- By ron-Da-vy, etc.-De Sta'eVs 
Tomb. 

\ LITERARY pilgrimage on Leman's 
•*■** shores that did not include Ferney 
among its shrines would be obviously incom- 
plete. No matter how widely we may dissent 
from his opinions or how much we may deplore 
some of his utterances, the brilliant philosopher 
who for so many years inhabited that spot and 
made it the intellectual capital of the world 
commands a place in letters which we may 
neither gainsay nor ignore, and the Chateau 
Voltaire is to many visitors one of the chief 
objects of interest in the neighborhood of 
Geneva. 

Beneath a summer sky a delightful jaunt of a 
few miles, among orchards and vineyards and 
past the ancestral home of Albert Gallatin, 
brings us to Voltaire's domain in Gex. The 
mansion and town of Ferney were alike the 
creation of the genius loci ; he was architect and 
builder of both. The town and its factories 
were erected to give shelter and employment to 
hundreds of artisans who appealed to him 
238 






Voltaire's Church — Mansion 

against oppressive employers at Geneva. The 
place has obviously degenerated since his time ; 
an air of shabbiness and thriftlessness prevails, 
and ancient smells by no means suggestive of 
" the odors of Araby the blest" obtrude upon 
the pilgrim. At the public fountain stout-armed 
women were washing family linen manifestly 
long unused to such manipulation. Near by 
dwell descendants of Voltaire's secretary Wag- 
niere. Upon a verdant plateau farther away, 
in the heart of one of the most beautiful regions 
of earth, " girdled by eighty leagues of moun- 
tains that pierce the sky," was Voltaire's last 
home. By its gate is the little church he built, 
bearing upon its gable his inscription " Deo 
Erexit Voltaire." Here he attended mass with 
his niece, and, as seigneur, was always incensed 
by the priest ; here he gave in marriage his 
adopted daughters ; here he preached a homily 
against theft ; and here he built for himself a 
tomb, projecting into the side of the church, — 
" neither within nor without," as he explained 
to a guest, — where he hoped to be buried. The 
church was long used as a tenement, later it has 
been a storage- and tool-house. The chateau is 
a spacious and dignified three-storied structure 
of Italian style, attractive in appearance and 
well suited to one of Voltaire's tastes and occu- 
pations. The exterior has been somewhat 
a 39 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

altered, but the apartments of the philosopher 
are essentially unchanged. The late proprietor 
preserved the study and bedroom nearly as Vol- 
taire left them when he started upon his fatal 
visit to Paris. They are small, with high 
ceilings, quaint carvings, faded tapestries, and 
are obviously planned to facilitate the work of 
the busiest author the world has known, who 
here, after the age of threescore, wrote a 
hundred and sixty works. Many of these as- 
sailed the church authorities, who had shown 
themselves capable of punishing mere difference 
of opinion by the rack and the stake, but " the 
religion of the Sermon on the Mount and the 
character of men of good and consistent lives" 
they did not attack : some of the books were 
cursed at Rome, some at Geneva, others were 
burned at both places. 

Disposed in Voltaire's rooms we have seen his 
heavy furniture ; his study-chair standing by the 
table upon which he wrote half of each day ; 
his beautiful porcelain stove, a gift from Fred- 
erick the Great ; a draped mausoleum bearing 
an inscription by Voltaire and designed by his 
protege to contain his heart ; many paintings 
presented by royal admirers, — Albani's " Toilet 
of Venus," Titian's " Venus and Love," a picture 
of Voltaire's chimney-sweep, portrait of Lecain 
who acted so many of Voltaire's tragedies, por- 
240 



His Rooms — Furniture 

traits of that philosopher, a fanciful deification 
of him by Duplessis ; on the same wall, coarse 
engravings of Washington and Franklin. Frank- 
lin was the firm friend of Voltaire, and it was his 
letters which first brought to Ferney news of 
the Declaration of Independence. The dis- 
colored embroidery of Voltaire's bed and arm- 
chair was wrought by his niece Madame Denis, 
" the little fat woman round as a ball." Habit- 
ually complaining of illness in his last years, he 
spent more than half his time in this quaint bed. 
He had a desk, containing writing materials, sus- 
pended above the bed so that he could write 
here day or night, and the amount of work he 
thus accomplished is astounding : in the last four 
years of feeble life he wrote thirty works vary- 
ing in size from a pamphlet to a ponderous 
tome. His breakfast was served in bed, and here 
he habitually attended to his correspondence, 
which included most of the sovereigns of Europe 
and the learned and great of all climes. In this 
bed he once lay for weeks feigning mortal illness, 
and thus induced the priest to give him the 
viaticum. This bedroom, too, was the scene of 
many quarrels with his niece regarding her ex- 
travagances, but as we sit in his chair by his 
bedside we prefer to recall more pleasing inci- 
dents the room has witnessed ; here he dictated 
to Marie Corneille the ardent words which 
q 241 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

brought reparation to many a cruelly wronged 
family ; this was the scene of his many pleasant- 
ries with the house-keeper " Baba," and of the 
loving ministrations of his sweet ward "Belle 
et Bonne." 

Many of Voltaire's belongings have been 
removed and his estate has been shorn of its 
vast dimensions, but much remains to remind us 
of the genius of the place. Here are the 
gardens, lawns, and shrubberies he planted ; on 
this turf-grown terrace beneath his study win- 
dows he paced as he planned his compositions, 
and here, at the age of eighty-three, he evolved 
" Irene" and parts of " Agathocele j" near by 
are his fount, his arbored promenade, the shaded 
spot where he wrote in summer days, the place 
of the lightning-rod made for him by Franklin. 
Long reaches of the hedge were rooted by him, 
many of the trees are from the nursery he cult- 
ured, the cedars were raised from seeds sent to 
him by the Empress Catherine. A venerable 
tree in the park was planted by Voltaire's own 
hands : when we point to a blemish upon its 
trunk and ask our guide, whose family have 
dwelt on the estate since the time of Voltaire, 
if that is the effect of lightning, as has been 
averred, he indignantly declares the only damage 
the tree ever sustained has been from visitors 
who, to secure souvenirs of the illustrious phi- 
242 



An Intellectual Capital — Reminiscences 

losopher, would destroy the whole tree were he 
not alert to protect it. 

For twenty years this home of Voltaire was 
the centre and pharos of the intellectual world. 
To this court kings sent couriers with proffers of 
honors and assurances of esteem ; hither came 
legions of litterateurs, academicians, politicians, 
eager to hail the savant or to secure his commen- 
dation. " All roads then led to Ferney as they 
once did to Rome," and the hospitalities of the 
chateau were so taxed that Voltaire declared he 
was innkeeper for all Europe. He habitually 
complained of the climate here, " Lapland in 
winter, Naples in summer ;" during some seasons 
" thirty leagues of snow were visible from his 
windows ;" but on the July day of our visit the 
atmosphere is exquisitely delightful and Voltaire's 
" desert" seems a paradise. Behind us rise the 
vine-clad slopes of Jura, below lies the lake like 
an amethystine sea, afar gleam the snow-crowned 
peaks, and about us in the old gardens are the 
golden sunshine, . the incense of flowers, the 
twitter of birds, and all the charm of sweet 
summer-time. As we linger in the spots he loved 
it is pleasant to recall the good that mingled in 
the oddly composite nature of the daring old 
man who inhabited this beautiful scene and 
created much of its beauty ; to remember that 
dumb creatures loved him and fed from his hand ; 
243 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

that the destitute and oppressed never vainly 
applied to him for succor or protection ; that in 
varying phrase he solemnly averred, in letters of 
counsel to youthful admirers in his own and 
other lands, " We are in the world only for the 
good we can do." 

Of the galaxy of litterateurs who had home 
or haunt by Leman's margins Madame de Stael, 
by her long residence and many incidents of her 
career, seems most closely associated with this 
region of delights. The chateau of Coppet 
has for two centuries belonged to her family ; 
here some portion of her girlhood was passed ; 
here she found asylum from the horrors of the 
French Revolution and residence when Na- 
poleon banished her from his capital. Later 
her son Auguste dwelt here, and the place is 
now the property of her great-granddaughter. 
Literary and social associations render this 
mediaeval chateau one of the most interesting 
spots on earth. Exiled from the society of 
Paris, de Stael erected here a court which 
became the centre of intellectual Europe. Cop- 
pet was in itself a lustrous microcosm whose 
attraction was the conversation of its hostess 
and queen, which allured the wit and wisdom 
of a continent, making this court not only a 
literary centre, but a political power of which 
Napoleon, by his proscriptions, proclaimed his 
244 



Home of de Stael 

fear. The great number of illustrious courtiers 
who came to Coppet caused the priestess of its 
hospitalities to aver she needed " a cook whose 
heels were winged." 

The darkly-verdured terraces of Jura on the 
one hand, the blue waters and the farther snowy 
peaks on the other, fitly environ the enchanting 
scene in the midst of which was set the abode 
of the greatest woman of her time. From 
Geneva a charming sail along the lake conveys 
us to her home and sepulchre. We approach 
the chateau between rows of venerable trees 
beneath which de Stael loitered with her 
guests. The stately edifice rises from three 
sides of a court, whence we are admitted to a 
large hall on the lower floor which she used as 
a theatre. These walls, which give back only 
the echo of our foot-falls, have resounded with 
the applause of fastidious auditors when the 
queen of Coppet, with her children and Re- 
camier, de Sabran, Werner, Jenner, Constant, 
Von Vought, or Ida Brun acted upon a stage at 
yonder end of the room. The composition of 
plays for this theatre was sometime de StaeFs 
principal recreation : these have been published 
as " Essais Dramatiques." But more ambitious 
dramas were presented ; the matchless Juliette 
acted here with Sabran and de Stael in " Semir- 
amis ;" Werner assisted in the first presentation 
245 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

of "Attila," which was written here; Con- 
stant's " Wallenstein" was composed here and 
first produced on this stage, as was also Oehlen- 
schlager's " Hakon Jarl." De Stael was an 
efficient actress, her lustrous eyes, superb arms, 
and strong and flexible voice compensating for 
deficiencies of training. A broad stair leads 
from the silent theatre to the principal apart- 
ments, among which we find the library where 
Necker wrote his " Politics and Finance," the 
grand salon and reception-rooms, — all of impos- 
ing dimensions and having parquetted floors. 
Arranged in these rooms are many mementos of 
the daughter of genius who once inhabited 
them, — hangings of tapestry ; antique spindle- 
legged furniture carved and gilded in quaint 
fashion ; the cherub-bedecked clock that stood 
above her desk ; her books and inkstand ; the 
desk upon which " Necker," " Germany," 
"Allemagne," and many minor treatises were 
written. Upon the wall is her portrait, by 
David, which pictures her with bare arms and 
shoulders, her head crowned by a nimbus of 
yellow turban which she wore when costumed 
as " Corinne :" the features are not classical, but 
the brunette face, with its splendid dark eyes, is 
comely as well as intellectual, and obviously 
contradicts Byron's declaration, " She is so ugly 
I wonder how the best intellect of France could 
246 






Memorable Rooms — Mementos 

have taken up such a residence.'* Schaffer's 
portrait of her daughter hangs near by, display- 
ing a face of striking beauty, and a picture of 
Madame Necker, de StaeTs mother, represents a 
sweet-faced woman who smiles upon the visitor 
despite the discomfort of a painfully tight fitting 
dress of white satin. Here also are portraits of 
Necker, of de StaeTs first husband, of her son 
Auguste, of Schlegel, and of other literary 
confreres y a statue of her father, by Tieck, and a 
bust of Rocca, her youthful second husband. 
The latter represents a finely-shaped head and a 
winning face. Byron thought Rocca notably 
handsome, and Frederica Brun testified, " he had 
the most magnificent head I ever saw." He 
was so slender that one of de StaeTs courtiers 
wondered " how his many wounds found a 
place upon him :" these wounds, received in the 
Peninsula, won for him the sympathy of de 
Stael, which deepened into love. 

As we wander through the rooms, waking the 
echoes and viewing the souvenirs of the illustri- 
ous dead, as we ponder their lives, their aims, 
their works, it seems, amid the viyid associations 
of the place, to require no supernal effort of the 
fancy to repeople it with the brilliant company 
who were wont to assemble here. Of these 
apartments, the salon, from whose wall looks 
down the portrait of Corinna, will longest hold 
247 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

the pilgrim. It was the throne-room of this 
court : here resorted a throng of the best and 
noblest minds, litterateurs, scientists, men of 
largest thought, of highest rank. Here Recamier 
was a frequent guest: yonder mirror, with its 
multipanes framed in gilt metal, often reflected 
her lovely face. In this room she danced for 
the delight of de Stael her famous gavotte, 
which had transported the beau monde of Paris, 
and was rewarded by its celebration in " Co- 
rinne." Some who came to this court remained 
as residential guests : for fifteen years Sismondi 
worked here upon his " Literature of Southern 
Europe," etc. ; here the sage Bonstetten wrote 
many of his twenty-five volumes ; here Schlegel, 
the great critic of his age, who is commem- 
orated in " Corinne" as Castel-Forte, was installed 
for twelve years and prepared his works on 
dramatic literature ; here Werner, author of 
"Luther," "Wanda," etc., wrote much of his 
mystic poetry ; here the Danish national poet 
composed his noblest tragedies, " Correggio" 
being a souvenir of Coppet; here Constant 
penned many dramas. Among the frequenters of 
this salon were Madame de Saussure, famous for 
her books on education ; Frederica Brun, with 
her daughter Ida who is imaged in " Allemagne ;" 
Sir Humphry and Lady Davy, the latter being the 
realization of " Corinne ;" Madame de Kriide- 
24.8 



Literary Court and Courtiers 

ner, author of " Valerie," from whom Delphine 
was mainly drawn ; Barante the critic ; Dumont, 
editor of Jeremy Bentham. Of those who 
came less often were Cuvier, Gibbon, Ritter, 
Lacretelle, Mirabeau, Houghton, Brougham, 
Ampere, Byron, Shelley, Montmorency, Wy- 
nona,Tieck, Miiller, Candolle, de Sergey, Prince 
Augustus, and scores of others. 

This room, where that galaxy assembled, has 
witnessed the most wonderful intellectual seances 
of the century. We may imagine something 
of the brilliancy of an assembly of such minds 
presided over by de Stael, — what gayety, what 
coruscations of wit, what displays of wisdom, 
what keenness of discussion were not possible to 
such a circle ! For some time religious tenets 
were frequently under consideration. Every 
shade of belief, doubt, and agnosticism had its 
defenders in the company. Sismondi was cor- 
responding with Channing of Boston, whose 
views he espoused, and the arrival of each letter 
caused the renewal of the argument in which 
de Stael was the principal advocate of the 
spiritual motive of Christianity as against a 
system of mere well-doing. All questions of 
literature, art, ethics, philosophy, politics, were 
considered here by the most capable minds of 
the age, the discussions being oft prolonged into 
the night. But that there may be too much 
249 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

even of a good thing is naively confessed by 
Bonstetten, one of the lights of these seances , in 
his letters : " I feel tired by surfeit of intellect : 
there is more mind expended at Coppet in a 
day than in many countries in a year, but I am 
half dead." Scintillant converse was inter- 
spersed with music from the old harpsichord in 
yonder corner, — touched by ringers that now are 
dust, — with recitations and reading of MSS. It 
was the habit of de Stael to read to the circle, 
for their criticism, what she had written during 
the morning, and to discuss the subsequent 
chapters. Guests who were writing at the 
chateau then read their compositions — Bonstet- 
ten's "Latium" often put the company to sleep — 
and eagerly sought de StaePs suggestions ; " the 
lesser lights were glad to borrow warmth and 
lustre from the central sun." Chateauvieux 
declares, " She formed my mental character ; 
for twenty years my sentiments were founded 
upon hers." Sismondi says, — She determined 
my literary career ; her good sense guided my 
pen." Bonstetten, Schlegel, Werner, and others 
bear similar testimony to the value of her 
counsel. 

The place was never more animated than in 

the last summer of her life, when Byron and 

Shelley used to cross the lake to join the circle 

in this room. De Stael had met Byron in Lon- 

250 



Byron, Shelley, etc. 

don during the ephemeral " Byron-madness," 
and now, in his social exile, her doors were freely- 
open to him : his letters testify " she made Cop- 
pet as agreeable as society and talent can make 
any place on earth." Here he first saw •* Glen- 
arvon," a venomous attack upon him which 
seems to have served no purpose save to illustrate 
the aphorism about "a woman scorned," its 
authoress having been notoriously importunate 
for Byron's favor, even attempting, it was said, 
to enter his apartments in male attire. In this 
salon Mrs. Hervey, the novelist, feigned to faint 
at Byron's approach : from the balcony outside 
these windows, where de Stael and her sire 
stood and saw Napoleon's army cross the Swiss 
frontier, Byron looked upon the scene which 
inspired some of his divinest stanzas. The 
chateau was a busy place in those years : a guest 
writes from here, " In every corner one is at 
a literary task ; de Stael is writing * Exile,' 
Auguste and Constant a tragedy, Sabran an opera, 
Sismondi his ' Republics,' Bonstetten a philos- 
ophy, and Rocca his ' Spanish War.' " 

One noble chamber hung with dim tapestries 
is that erst occupied by Recamier : it had before 
been the sick-room of Madame Necker and the 
scene of her husband's loving care of her, which 
de Stael so touchingly records. The chamber 
of de Stael is near by, its windows overlooking 



A Literary Pilgrimage 

her sepulchre : here she wrote the books which 
made her fame ; here she instructed her children, 
their Sabbath lessons being from the devout 
treatises of her father and a Kempis's " Imitation 
of Christ," the book she read in her own dying 
hours. A smaller room, looking out upon the 
park, the terraces of Jura, and the white walls of 
Lausanne, was shared by Constant and Bonstet- 
ten. In the tower above have been found letters 
written by Gibbon to \i\s fiance, who became the 
mother of de Stael : they have been published 
by the grandson of de Stael, and show that the 
conduct of the great " Decliner and Faller" 
toward the then poor girl was thoroughly selfish 
and unscrupulous. 

The rooms are renovated and the place is 
offered for rent, but nothing is destroyed. The 
formal park at the side of the chateau is little 
changed : along yonder wooded aisle and upon 
this all'ee between prim patches of sward the 
de Stael walked with her guests in the summers 
of long ago ; upon the seat beneath this coppice, 
beside this placid pool, or on the margin of 
yonder brooklet from the top of Jura, they 
lingered in brilliant converse till the stars came 
out one by one above the darkening mountains. 
These — the mute, soulless inanimates — remain, 
while the illustrious company that quickened and 
glorified them all has vanished from human ken. 
252 



Tomb of Necker and de Stael 

Some rods distant from the chateau, shaded 
by a sombre grove and bounded by a hoary 
wall, is the picturesque chapel in which Necker 
is laid with his wife, to whose tomb he, for 
many years, daily came to pray. In the same 
crypt the mortal part of de Stael rests at his 
feet ; the portal was walled up at her burial and 
eye hath not since seen her sepulchre. A stone 
which marks the grave of her son Auguste, and 
lies on the threshold of that sealed portal, is 
fittingly inscribed, " Why seek ye the living 
among the dead ?" 

Beyond the closed gate we pause for a parting 
view of the scene now flooded with sunshine, 
and as we leave the place we carry thence that 
resplendent vision embalmed in a memory that 
will abide with us forever. As I write these 
closing lines I see again that summer sky, cloud- 
less save for the fleece floating above Jura like 
that which the bereaved Necker fancied was 
bearing the soul of his wife to paradise. I see 
again the glimmering water ; the mountains 
with their tiaras of snow, sending back the sun- 
beams from their shining peaks like reflections 
from the pearly gates that enclose the Celestial 
City ; and, amid this sublime beauty, the gleam- 
ing sycamores that sway above the tomb of 
** the incomparable Corinna." 



253 



INDEX 



Abbotsford, — Scott, — 161. 

Addison, 15, 19, 30, 36, 91. 

Akenside, 16, 25. 

Andersen, Hans Christian, 55, 57. 

Annesley Hall and Park, 71-77. 

Aram, Eugene; Scenes, III, 144-147. 

Arbuthnot, 16, 36. 

Arnold, Dr. and Matthew, 92. 

Astell, Mary, 30. 

Bacon, 21. 

Baillie, Joanna, 15. 

Barbauld, Mrs., 14, 16. 

Besant, 15, 18. 

Bolingbroke, 37. 

Bolton Abbey, 143. 

Bonnivard, Francis, 227. 

Bowes, Dotheboys, 106. 

Braddon, Miss, 38. 

Bronte's, The, 68 j Brussels, 134, 207; Haworth, 121 j 

Scenes and Characters of Tales, 121, 124, 126, 127, 

129, 135, 207-225. 
Brown, Oliver Madox, 32. 
Brussels, — Villette, — Bronte* Scenes, 207. 
Bulwer, — Eugene Aram, — 144-147. 
Burnsj Alloway, 181 ; Dumfries 164; Ellisland, 171 j 

Grave, 165 ; Haunts, — Scenes of Poems, — 164, 165, 

166, 170, 171, 178, 181, 196, 200, 2055 Heroines, 

185, 190, 194; Niece, 183. 
Butler, Samuel, 91. 
Byron; Annesley, 71; Coppet, 250 ; Harrow, 69; 

Newstead, 80 ; Leman 226-237; London, 62; 
-55 



Index 

Scenes of Poems, 69, 72-77, 80-90, 226, 232, 233, 

251 j Tomb, 70. 
Caine, Hall, mentioned, 32. 
Campbell, 66, 68. 
Canning, 64. 
Carlyle, Birthplace, 162 j Homes, 33, 162, 167 $ Sepulchre, 

163. 
Chaucer, 24, 25, 50. 
Chaworth, Mary Ann, 71-79. 
Chelsea, 29-37. 
Chillon, 233. 

Clarens, — Rousseau, — 232. 
Coleridge, 19, 1065 Grave, 22; Home, 21. 
Collyer, Robert, Early Haunts, 136. 
Colwick Hall, — Chaworth-Musters, — 78. 
Congreve, mentioned, 15, 30, 37. 
Constant, 245, 246, 248, 251, 252. 
Cooling, — Great Expectations, — 57. 
Coppet, — Madame de Stael, — 244. 
Coventry, — George Eliot, — 102. 
Coxwold, — Sterne, — 1 13. 
Crabbe, mentioned, 19, 66. 
Craigenputtock, — Carlyle, — 1 67. 
Crockett, S. R., 178. 
Cunningham, Allan, 164. 

Davy, Sir Humphry, mentioned, 155, 159, 248. 
Denham, mentioned, 40. 
De Quincey, mentioned, 21, 62. 

De Stael, 159, 228, 230; Home and Sepulchre, 244. 
Dickens, 13, 19, 20, 24, 28, 34, 230; Gad's Hill, 49} 

Scenes of Tales, 18-20, 22, 24-28, 54, 57-61, 64, 

106. 
Donne, John, 35, 36. 
Dorset, — Shaftesbury, — 15, 36. 
256 



Index 

Dotheboys, — Nicholas Nickleby, — 106. 

Douglas, Poet of Annie Laurie, 175-179. 

Du Maurier, 18, 20. 

Dumfries, — Burns, — 1 64. 

Dyer, 91. 

Ecclefechan, — Carlyle, — 1 62. 

Eliot, George, 31, 1435 Birthplace, Early Homes, 93; 

Grave, 23 j Scenes and Characters of Fiction, 93, 95- 

103. 
Emerson, 34, 104, 169, 170. 
Erasmus, mentioned, 36. 
Fairfax, Edward, 137, 142. 
FalstafT, 50, 55, 56, 58. 
Ferney , — Voltaire, — 23 8 . 
Fields, James T., 55, 59. 
Foston, — Sydney Smith, — 149. 
Froude, 33. 

Gad's Hill, — Dickens, Shakespeare, — 49. 
Gaskell, Mrs., 101, 130, 131, 215, 223. 
Gay, 15, 30, 33, 34. 
Geneva, 227. 

Gibbon, 39, 63; On Leman, 231, 232, 249, 252. 
Goldsmith, mentioned, 18. 
Gray, — Scene of Elegy, — 39. 
Hampstead, Literary, 13. 
Harridan, Mrs., 15. 
Harrow, — Byron, — 18, 69. 
Haworth, — The Brontes, — 121. 
Hawthorne, 68, 71, 184. 
Hazlitt, mentioned, 19, 21, 170. 
Herbert, George, 36. 
Heslington, — Sydney Smith, — 148. 
Highgate, Literary, 21. 

Highland Mary, — Homes, Scenes, Grave, — 195. 
R 257 



Index 

Hogarth, 19. 

Hogg, mentioned, 161. 

Hood, mentioned, 19, 68. 

Hook, Theodore, 26, 37. 

Hunt, Leigh, 18, 19, 21, 34, 68. 

Ilkley, — Collyer, etc., — 137. 

Irving, Edward, mentioned, 164, 170. 

Irving, Washington, 66, 71, 72, 76, 83, 86, 89. 

Jackson, Helen Hunt, mentioned, 184. 

Jeanie Deans, 167. 

Jeffrey, Francis, 149, 154, 155, 170. 

Johnson, Dr., 15, 18, 25, 34. 

Keats, 15, 16, 19, 25. 

Keighley, — Bronte, Collyer, — 121, 136. 

Kensal Green, Graves of Literati, 68. 

Kingsley, 35. 

Kit-Kat Club, 15. 

Lake Leman, — Literary Shrines, — 226-253. 

Lamb, mentioned, 19, 21. 

Landon, Letitia E., 30. 

Laurie, Annie, Birthplace and Homes, 172, 176; 

Grave, 177; Song, 180. 
Lausanne, — Gibbon, Dickens, etc., — 230. 
Livingstone, 81, 82, 84, 86. 
Loamshire of George Eliot, 93. 
Locke, 36. 

London, 13, 17, 24, 45, 62, 119, 148. 
Longfellow, alluded to, 55, 142, 234. 
Macaulay, 64, 155, 158, 159. 
Maclise, 19, 31, 34, 55. 
Marvell, 21. 

Maxwelton, — Annie Laurie, — 173. 
Melrose, — Scott, — 161. 
Miller, Joaquin, 71, 83. 

258 



Index 

Milton, 39, 228. 

Mitford, Miss, mentioned, 30. 

Montagu, Mary Wortley, 21, 31, 62. 

Moore, 64, 67. 

Mulock, Miss,- — John Halifax Scenes, — 92. 

Murray, John, — Drawing-Room, — 66. 

Newburgh, — Sterne, — 118. 

Nevvstead Abbey, — Byron, — 80. 

Nidderdale, — Eugene Aram, — 143. 

Niece of Burns, 183 ; quoted, 196, 204. 

Nithsdale, — Burns, Scott, Carlyle, — 164. 

Nuneaton, — Milby of Eliot, — 101. 

Pepys, 3°> 3 1 - 

Pope, 14, 15, 18, 21, 30, 37, 38. 

Porter, Jane, 39. 

Ramsay, Allan, 178. 

Richardson, 16, 37. 

Rochester, — Dickens, — 54, 60, 61. 

Rogers, mentioned, 15, 143. 

Rokeby, — Scott, — 109. 

Rossetti, 23, 229 j Home and Friends, 31, 32. 

Rousseau, 227; Scenes of Fiction, 232, 233, 237. 

Rugby, — Hughes, Arnold, — 92. 

Ruskin, mentioned, 34. 

Schlegel, 248. 

Scott; Abodes and Resorts, 64, 66, 109, 161, 172; 

Scenes and Characters, 109, 161, 167, 172. 
Shakespeare, 25, 50, 91, 92, 93. 
Shelley, 19, 21 ; Leman, 227, 229, 232, 237, 250. 
Shepperton Church and Parsonage, 98. 
Smith, Sydney, 68 ; Yorkshire Homes and Church, 148. 
Smollett, 30, 33, 34. 
Somervile, 91. 
Somerville, Mrs., 29. 

259 



Index 

Southey, mentioned, 21, 106. 

Southwark, — Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dickens, — 24. 

Stanley, H. M., 88, 184. 

Steele, 14, 15, 19, 30, 33, 36. 

Sterne, 34 ; Grave, 1 20 5 Home and Study, 112, 113, 115; 

Resorts, 113, 118. 
Stoke-Pogis, — Gray, — 39. 
Swift, 15, 30, 36, 37. 
Swinburne, 32, 33. 
Tennyson, 33, 39. 
Thackeray, 18, 68, 104, 120. 
Turner, 37, 142, 143. 
Voltaire, Chateau and Study, 238. 
Waller, 39, 46. 
Walpole, 15, 30. 
Walton, mentioned, 36. 
Watts, Theodore, 32. 
Wilde, Oscar, 35. 

Wordsworth, 15, 21, 106, 143, 161. 
Wuthering Heights, 129. 
York, — Sterne, etc., — in. 
Yorkshire Shrines, 106, ill, 121, 136, 148. 



THE END. 



260 



LITERARY SHRINES: 

THE HAUNTS OF SOME FAMOUS AMERICAN 
AUTHORS. 



By Theo. F. Wolfe, M.D., Ph.D., 

Author of "A Literary Pilgrimage," etc. 



Illustrated with four photogravures. 
Crushed buckram, gilt top, deckel edges, $1.25; 
half calf or half morocco, $3.00. 



CONTAINS, AMONG OTHERS, CHAPTERS TREATING OF 

CONCORD : A Village of Literary Shrines. 

THE OLD MANSE. 

THE HOMES OF EMERSON AND ALCOTT. 

HAWTHORNE'S "WAYSIDE." 

THE WALDEN OF THOREAU. 

IN LITERARY BOSTON. 

OUT OF BOSTON: Cambridge— Elm wood— Mt. 
Auburn — "Wayside Inn" — Brook Farm — Web- 
ster's Marshfield— Homes of Whittier, Haw- 
thorne's Salem, etc. 

IN BERKSHIRE WITH HAWTHORNE: The 
Graylock Region— Middle and Lower Berk- 
shire—Haunts of Hawthorne, Thoreau, Bryant, 
Melville, Sedgwick, Kemble, Holmes, Long- 
fellow, etc. 

A DAY WITH THE GOOD GRAY POET. 



Uniform with " A Literary Pilgrimage. 



J. B. Lippincott Company, Publishers. 

PHILADELPHIA. 



By Anne Hollingsworth 

Wharton. 



Through Colonial Doorways. 

V/ith a number of Colonial Illustrations from Drawings 
specially made for the work. i2mo. Cloth, $1.25. 

"It is a pleasant retrospect of fashionable New York 
and Philadelphia society during and immediately following 
the Revolution ; for there was a Four Hundred even in 
those days, and some of them were Whigs and some were 
Tories, but all enjoyed feasting and dancing, of which 
there seemed to be no limit. And this little book tells us 
about the belles of the Philadelphia meschianza, who they 
were, how they dressed, and how they flirted with Major 
Andre and other officers in Sir William Howe's wicked 
employ. ' '—Ph iladelpk ia Record. 



Colonial Days and Dames. 

"With numerous Illustrations. i2mo. Cloth, $1.25. 

"In less skilful hands than those of Anne Holllings- 
worth Wharton's, these scraps of reminiscences from 
diaries and letters would prove but dry bones. But she has 
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roses from an old album and freshened them into bloom 
and perfume. Each slight paragraph from a letter is 
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at least of their date, and there are pretty suggestions as to 
how and why such letters were written, with hints of love 
affairs, which lend a rose-colored veil to what were prob- 
ably every-day matters in colonial families."— Pittsburg 
Bulletin. 

J. B. Lippincott Company, 

PHILADELPHIA. 



By Charles Conrad Abbott, 



The Birds About Us. 

Illustrated. i2tno. Cloth, $2.00. 



Travels in a Tree-Top. 

i2mo. Cloth, $1.25. 



Recent Rambles; 

or, in touch with nature. 

Illustrated. i2mo. Cloth, $2.00. 



A Colonial Wooing. 

i2mo. Cloth, $1.00. 



"Dr. Abbott is a kindred spirit with Burroughs and 
Maurice Thompson and, we might add, Thoreau, in his love 
for wild nature, and with Olive Thorne Miller in his love 
for the birds. He writes without a trace of affectation, and 
his simple, compact, yet polished style breathes of out-of- 
doors in every line. City life weakens and often destroys 
the habit of country observation ; opportunity, too, fails 
the dweller in cities to gather at first hand the wise lore 
possessed by the dweller in tents ; and whatever sends a 
whiff of fresh, pure, country air into the city house, or 
study, should be esteemed an agent of intellectual sanita- 
tion." — New York Churchman. 



J. B. Lippincott Company, 

PHILADELPHIA. 



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